Hunter started to descend down the ladder, moving slowly and carefully, trying to limit the noise he made as far as possible, and Marius followed along behind him, with the rest starting to move a few seconds later. All of them had their senses turned up to maximum, whether those be cybernetic enhancements or replacements, or magically attuned and augmented powers granting them super-human perception.
"Hold!" Hunter hissed. "Got a faint IR beam, across the lift shaft, left side of us. Cuts about a third of the way over, about half a metre below me.
"There is an ultrasound beam on your right." Marius craned his head a little. "Also about one third of the way across the core, and…" he swapped his cybereyes' vision mode and looked over to the left to confirm his thoughts, then swapped back, "yes, it is the same height as the one on the left."
"Check in the middle then for a third type of technology." Shimazu suggested. "I can't see anything from up here, but it doesn't make sense to cover the sides of the lift and not the middle."
"Swap places with me, Hunter." Marius swung to one side of the ladder, and moved his grip to the edge of the ladder, trying to make room for Hunter on the other side. It wouldn't have been easy to swap over on the narrow ladder at the best of times, but working in the dark added an extra layer of difficulty. As Hunter climbed up he put a hand down on one rung and felt resistance as he covered Marius' hand in his own – just as he started to transfer his weight onto it. If he carried on he'd probably crush the pilot's hand – and that wouldn't be good for any delicate work on the electronics systems they might find. He moved sideways and grabbed at the side rail of the ladder, but in the darkness and in his rush to avoid crushing Marius he missed, and started to fall. Tads was just starting to reach out with a levitate spell when his hands grabbed hold of the ladder around his own waist height, and he swung precariously for a moment until he managed to arrest his motion. On his second attempt he moved up more sedately and securely past Marius, giving him room to descend.
Marius crouched as much as he could, lowering himself down the ladder one rung at a time and cycling through his own senses as much as he could, checking for non-visual traces like ultrasound emitters as well as thing that would show up in the light spectrum – visible normally or not. As he moved down past the point where Hunter had stopped, he could just about make out a small device or block of equipment that was positioned behind the ladder, in the groove that ran all the way up and down the lift shift. The concrete recess was about fifty centimetres wide and the ladder was bolted to it every metre or so, keeping it from standing proud of the lift shaft and interfering with the movement of the lift. There wasn't enough room for the lift to pass anyone hanging on the ladder, nor was there any room to swing around the sides or get behind it – but there was enough room for the odd bulkhead light and some cables to run up and down, as well as the occasional other piece of kit. He checked it out carefully, but it didn't appear to be emitting any kind of beam or signal that he could detect.
He carefully lowered himself one more rung, craning to get close to it and find out what it was – and then saw a very faint light appear on the side of the box.
"Hunter, grab me!" he hissed sharply. As he felt the gnarly hand grab at the belt around his waist, he took a deep breath and then let go with both hands, swinging his body to the side. A moment later, he inverted, hanging upside down of the lift shaft, feeling blood rush to his brain and all his kit shift and move in response to the changed orientation. He had no time for that, though, as he snaked his hands forward and through the rungs, grasping at the box and pulling on the case. There was no time for finesse or subtlety, though. He ripped off the case, hoping to hell that even Novatech weren't paranoid enough to put strong anti-tamper mechanisms on devices in here, and then tried to assess the device before him, his ultrasound emitters bathing the device in a signal and trying to make sense of the rumbled return of chips, circuit traces and tiny components. "Light!" He wasn't sure who it was, but someone above him turned on a torch or light source of some kind, letting him focus on the box before him. He felt his trousers slip slightly, the belt riding up across his buttocks and gravity beckoned him downwards, but he didn't have time to focus on that. Reflexively, he opened his legs as wide as he could, shifting the position of his hips and stopping the trousers from moving, while he desperately worked with his hands. As he had gotten closer, a part of his mind recognised that the light on the side of the device had gotten stronger, becoming brighter – and in fact had been joined by a second light.
A quick look at the circuit and he fumbled for a tool, jamming it across the device and shorting out several of the components, holding the conductive shaft of his screwdriver across a bunch of the delicate traces. Several more tiny LEDs began to flash, and he breathed a little sigh of relief.
"I think the device is in error mode – it certainly looks that way."
"What is it?" Kai's voice came drifting down the lift shaft.
"A magnetometer. It had certainly picked up on the metal I was carrying, or possibly my cyberware. I suspect it would have been triggered by most of us, with the gear that we are carrying. No doubt it is part of the building security system, so no doubt someone is aware of a faulty sensor now. But I hope that the damage I have done will look more like a short-circuit or natural wear and tear than sabotage – at least until a crew gets here."
"This is the VIP lift, so that might not take as long as we'd like!" Shimazu warned.
"Yes – agreed. But we have no way of changing that now. We just need to press on, quickly."
"Can you use this thing you've just broken to attack the building rigger?"
"In theory, yes, but I would need to hook in with my deck here. It is not an optimal place to launch an assault from, and I fear that if there is more than one rigger in the building, or even security guard in whatever hub they monitor from, that seeing their rigger slumped over the desk if I DID manage to defeat him would quickly raise the alarm."
"But you're slumped over when you're flying or doing things with your drones, and we don't get alarmed. Well, not any more…"
"Ahh, but there is slumped and slumped, Tads. As I understand it, you always have some kind of magical force to deal with after casting a spell or summoning a spirit. But we are not alarmed if you look a little tired – only if there is blood coming from your eyes and ears."
"Oh – I see. So if you attacked him and won it would cause physical harm to his body?"
"Indeed. So that is why I would prefer to save that kind of action for later, if we have to do it at all."
"Let's move on." Kai called down. "We know we're on the clock, so let's not push our luck." Marius didn't answer, but started to clamber down the ladder until he was level with the lift doors on the tenth floor. He looked across the lift shaft, cycling through his vision modes to try and build up a picture of what lay over there – none of which helped with the three metres of open lift shaft that he needed to cross to reach the door. A moment later he felt his weight decrease, gradually becoming buoyant and floating up until he was barely touching the ladder.
"I've got you – just direct me to where you need to be." Tads called down, one hand holding the ladder while the other hand made gentle gestures in the air. It wasn't strictly necessary, but it did help her focus, and she definitely didn't want to make it any harder than it needed to be. Marius gave her a swift thumbs-up gesture and then pointed towards the doors, and Tads gently moved him over so he could examine them closely. It took him about thirty seconds to identify the sensors on the inside of the door and about a minute to bypass them, making sure that they would all report in that the door was still firmly shut. It was a lot easier than on the top doors as he was working from the inside face, and a lot of the mechanisms were exposed to his tinkering. When he'd gotten everything bypassed, he pulled on the fireman's release lever, and the doors sprang open about fifteen millimetres, a narrow shaft of dull yellow light spilling through the crack into the lift shaft.
Marius fed through his probe camera, the tiny lens snaking through the gap just above floor level and started to flex left and right, taking in the view of the room outside, and feeding it back to his screen – from which he broadcast over a very low power network to the rest of the team, still hanging onto the ladder, so they could get an idea of what they were going to face as well. The room outside the lift doors appeared to be octagonal, and reeked of luxury and expense. The walls were clad in a rich, deep wooden panelling, strips of mahogany being broken up with a darker ebony variant. Most of the lighting was off, with only a few recessed down lighters in the ceiling being illuminated, bathing the room in a very soft and warm light. A number of paintings hung on the walls, and there were some sculptures on plinths spaced along half the faces of the octagon. Large glass doors led to corridors in the north, south and east ends of the room, with cameras pointing down at them from the corners of the wall.
Directly across from the lift doors, separated by ten metres of thick carpet was a gently curving desk, another large block of coloured wood and finely crafted detail that glowed under the scattered lighting, the glossy finish casting pinpoints of reflected lights on various walls around it.
"It looks quiet, getting ready to move in."
"Wait, Tads!" Shimazu hissed as he saw Marius started to move upwards. "There's a ward over the outside of the doors – very subtle. Not very high force… yes, it's an alarm ward. Well-hidden, too!" Marius froze in place as Tads stopped his movement, and then she gently bought him back over to their side of the lift shaft and waited for him to grab the ladder.
"I can't push a live spell through the ward like that. If it's up on a person, it's going to set it off. I can cast THROUGH it, though it will be tougher. But not push through it, at least not unless I'm masking it and carrying it through. Short version, we'll have to step through the ward without any spells active, unless we can actively mask them."
"Quiet a moment, please." Aswon cocked his head, moving it from side to side a little, and focussing, his eyes closed as he listened intently. "Right, I can hear a coffee machine in the background there. One of the fancy types, with the spout for making frothy milk. Someone's on a drinks run. I don't know if it's someone working later, or the security guard – but we probably want to hang on a little."
They waited, and sure enough, a guard came around a corner from some hidden nook to the east, appearing in front of the large glass doors and headed towards the desk, a steaming mug of coffee held in his hands. Once seated back at his desk they could see him start to scan the desk in front of him, presumably looking at some kind of screen or CCTV display that was set into the desk surface.
"Can we take him down silently," Kai asked the group, his throat bobbing up and down as he sub-vocalised the question.
"Possibly – it's not a huge range for a throwing knife, and if the doors are opened wider, I'm pretty sure I can hit him from here." Aswon closed one eye to let him sight through the narrow gap a little easier. "But, if I drop him, and he has a biomonitor, it's going to scream to the security centre and alert the system."
"Crap. Same if we manage to get someone over there and physically hit him, I guess?"
"Yes, afraid so, Kai. I think our best bet here is Tads, with her stunball. By the nature of how the magic works, it can't hurt him – not physically, just knock him out. That's a lot less likely to trigger an alarm, as it's like him just falling asleep…"
"Can you do it, Tads?"
"It'll be harder because of the alarm ward, Kai – but yes."
"Well, when you do it, make sure you wait for a few seconds after he's had a sip of coffee and had time to put the mug down then!" Aswon warned. "Don't want to risk second degree burns or scalds triggering his biomonitor if we've gone to the effort of not hurting him otherwise!"
Tads waited for the opportune moment and then drew in mana, chanelling it into a massive blast of energy and hurling it across the lift shift and reception room beyond. The guard took the blast to his face, slumping over the desk with a quiet thud.
"Right, got him. Hunter, I'm going to levitate you instead of Marius, and then float you back and forth across the lift shaft – can you carry people over to the doors? Just make sure you don't put your hands through the doorway, and you won't set the alarm off."
"Sure."
"I've sent my spirit back to the metaplanes, and then asked it to appear in the room over there – that way it can get around the ward. It's not going to owe us as many favours afterwards, but it should be able to conceal us as we get over and through the ward – cover us against the cameras in there." Aswon informed them, watching as the spirit disappeared from astral space next to him and then flickered into existence again on the opposite side of the alarm ward.
"Useful trick!" Hunter exclaimed. "Why don't we do that more often?"
"You have to be able to see the ward or barrier, and the space on the other side you want the spirit to get to – and it uses up your bargaining power with the spirit. When Tads does her ritual, depending on how successful she is, it will only do a number of things for her. Asking it to go home counts as one thing, and to come back on the other side is another thing. So that's two favours it won't do for something else – like concealing us, or guarding us, or causing an accident."
"Ahh, gotcha. So it's not efficient, but it can help you solve problems sometimes?" Hunter saw Aswon nod to him, and filed that away as 'useful information'.
They set to work, with Hunter taking Marius over first to open the doors fully, then bringing over the rest of the team one by one and pushing them over the threshold from the lift shaft and into the room beyond, trusting in the concealment power of the spirit to cover them against the discreet cameras set up in the room. When they were all over, Tads waited for Hunter to be ready, hanging on to the inside lip of the lift shaft and giving him a quiet countdown before she dropped the spell, letting him move across the threshold without any magic tied to his aura.
Marius had already moved over to the cameras and had reached up and fiddled with the case, getting access to the internals and hooking it up to his deck, then slaving the camera feed to a loop, displaying just an empty room with the lift doors closed. Both cameras facing across the lobby area had been bypassed by the time Hunter made it into the room, and they could breathe a little easier now that nobody could see them remotely, spirit concealment or not.
The guard had slumped over the desk, and as they checked his body out they could see that he had been studying a small bank of monitors as they'd suspected, appearing to display empty corridors and walkways. It was their guess that these were all on this level, scattered around the building and a way for the guard to keep an eye on things from this central location.
Aswon grabbed the unconscious guard's restraints from his belt and applied them to his hands, then gently rolled him off the chair and under the desk, out of sight. His vitals were stable, and once they'd secured his radio, ammo and firearm they laid him out as comfortably as they could, to sleep off the effects of Tads' spell.
Marius had headed down to the south set of doors from the reception area, approaching obliquely from the side panel. He wasn't sure how good the sensor was that detected approaching people, and that made him nervous – especially as he was relying on the protection of his concealing spirit. Despite the scores of times that the ephemeral magical spirits had saved them over the last year, there was still a reservation in his mind about them, some aspect of their being that he couldn't bring himself to trust. They defied the neat and tidy laws of physics, and most of the time you couldn't even see them – and that offended his neat and tidy mind. And now here he was approaching a sensor with nothing but this vague magical protection to stop him being picked up, but to his mind standing fully exposed. It made his spine tingle, and if he'd still had his original flesh, that would have been itching…
He pushed the thoughts out of his mind, concentrating on the task at hand, and carefully worked on the sensor and door scanner, working the covers off the devices and defeating the anti-tamper mechanisms, then examining the devices internally. Despite his hopes, it appeared that the scanners up here did NOT retain any details of who had passed through them recently, apparently by design – they were certainly capable of it, but it looked to have been excluded in the software. Two minutes later, though, he had the system bypassed, with the scanner set to report null readings, and the door lock disengaged.
"We are ready to proceed on this side. I have assumed that the south door is the most appropriate, as her office is in the south-west corner, but we will have to search for her office by hand." Marius reported to the others.
"No, we won't. I've found a floor plan. Well, some of one." Hunter responded. "Looks like the guard had a print-out and he's scrawled some notes on it for their new guests. It doesn't show everything, but I've got the location of Angel's office, as well as some of the vice-presidents – they look like they have the other corner offices. Also the executive gym, a conference room and a few of the meeting rooms are marked up, along with two sets of guest quarters, and something labelled 'magic rituals'. Guess they needed to be able to direct the visitors around."
"I am surprised they did not have the file available to just download and show people." Marius muttered.
"I'd guess that the mages they've bought in don't have any 'ware – no datajacks or routers or anything, same reason as Tads. Will interfere with their mojo. That might extend to a fear of tech or just not wanting to use it as much." Aswon suggested. "Doesn't make sense, but they're rare enough assets that I figure if they demand a physical map, they get one. And hey, don't look a gift horse in the mouth!"
"I've also spotted someone moving around – I think it's the executive gym. Certainly it has exercise equipment in it. Looks like an ork, smaller than me, working out on one of the pec machines." There was a weird noise over the comms and Hunter made a dismissive noise that the system only half translated. "He's barely pushing thirty kilos…"
"Don't dismiss him, Hunter. If he's not shifting that much weight, as an ork, that means he's probably one of the mages – and his strengths probably lie elsewhere…" Aswon put a hand on Hunter's shoulder and leant in to examine the image more closely. "Yeah, look at the necklace. Pretty big lump on it for standard jewellery – probably some kind of spell fetish or foci."
"Right – the guard will have one of those RFID thingies in him – and we can clone those, right?" Kai asked. "So let's do that, and then hustle!"
"Assuming the guard has the run of the place, yes."
"What do you mean, Shimazu? He's a guard, why wouldn't he?"
"He's the guard for the reception area. But all three exits out of here are security checkpoints. There's a small kitchen area, a rest room and a toilet around the corner, and some cleaners' cupboards. But everywhere else is behind a security door. I think he's here just as a watcher, possibly even a glorified receptionist."
"How can we tell?"
"I've got this, give me a minute…" Tads squirmed down next to the guard and laid her hand on his forehead, then gently started to probe through his thoughts. "Shimazu, you're right – he's not able to get through the doors into the rest of the level – he just has to deal with anyone coming up through the lift and man the monitors. If he spots anything, he radios through. There's a VIP guard room somewhere to the west of the floor, in between the two corner offices, he thinks – he's never been there. He's never been out of the reception area up here. He has wandered around on other floors, but not up here. And… yes, the ork in the gym is a mage, one of the site mages, not the visitors. Name is Garick or Garik, something like that – he works with Alfonso, which is the dwarf we got told is the leader of the local mage unit. And this guy is next due to check in at four, by radio."
"Good work, Tads – ok, so we've still got some time. He's going to be out for hours isn't he, as long as nobody disturbs him. But that also means we can't steal his ID and roam the floor – so what do we do?"
"What we have done to this first door. Identify security, approach, bypass and move on. One by one. Carefully." Marius sighed, realising how much work that might be. And while Kai thought they had plenty of time, Marius was well aware just how many precious minutes would be chewed up by each security system they found. "We had better move out."
"You don't need me for this bit do you? The planting evidence in the office?"
"Technically no, Kai – why?" Aswon looked at him in confusion.
"Untie the guard then. I think his uniform will be a little big on me, but passable. I'm going to stay here and man the desk, hopefully I can deal with any roaming patrols that come this way, and at least give you some warning of their approach."
"Ok, that works." Aswon moved in to help Kai strip the guard down to his underwear and swap over the uniform, while Marius, Shimazu, Hunter and Tads took the floorplan and moved through the south doors, heading into the main corridor that appeared to circulate on that side of the building. As soon as Kai was in position and sipping at the mug of coffee, Aswon hustled after them, heading down the corridor to the south and catching up with the other four members of the team, who had moved around the corner of the t-junction and then stopped, staring down the dimly-lit corridor.
"What's up? What have you spotted?"
"Nothing." Marius frowned, staring down the corridor, his blue eyes flitting back and forth, taking in the scene. "Nothing at all. But I… I just have a feeling. I cannot believe that a major thoroughfare like this would have no security systems on it. It does not fit with the profile for the rest of the building. I just cannot SEE what they have."
"So, no cameras visible, and I'm guessing you've not seen any pinholes or concealed systems. And no ultrasound or infra-red trip beams?" Aswon glanced over at Marius and Hunter, seeing them both shake their heads.
"One thing I have spotted through, is those plant pots." Shimazu gestured down the corridor about ten metres, and then moved his finger further down to a second pot affixed to the outer wall. "Look in astral… looks kinda fuzzy, just like the stuff on the roof. None of the pictures or statues mounted on stuff down the corridor look odd – just those two."
"So, whatever defences they have on the roof to stop magic, they have the same thing here… but only in those two places? Odd." Aswon frowned, then focussed on the plants, confirming what Shimazu had mentioned to him. "Ok, they could have some of those magnetometer things in the wall, but I got the impression they were kind of short range, Marius?" The pilot nodded at him, still surveying the corridor intently. "Could be air pressure sensors, though in a corridor this size those would be a nightmare to calibrate and monitor. Microphones maybe? Though sounds have got to echo up and down here weirdly, and the soft carpet and wall fabrics would deaden sound a lot…" Aswon trailed off as Marius suddenly had a flash of inspiration and then slowly sank down onto his knees, spread his hands before him and gently lowered his body to the ground, twisting his head slightly to get his eye as close to the thickly woven carpet as he could.
"Ach! There… there is a slight distortion in the carpet. It raised, perhaps only one or two millimetres, but it is detectable – from the right angle. Pressure plates." He felt Hunter lay down on the ground next to him and then saw the faint glimmer of the IR laser emitting from Hunter's cyberware as his range-finder kicked in.,
"Yeah, Marius is right. Stretching all the way over the corridor, apart from a five centimetre wide strip next to each wall, there's a raised section. Perhaps three metres long. Jumpable, with effort. But you can't see easily where it ends…"
"Easy for you to jump maybe" Tads answered, "but not for some of us. Ok, I'd normally just levitate us over… but that would mean using magic next to those plants. And if they're the same as the stuff on the roof, that means we might set off whatever it does…"
Marius and Hunter sprang up from the floor, and the team looked down the corridor trying to work out how to get past the trap. With a few moments of work, Hunter sketched out where the pads were as precisely as he could, feeding the data into his spatial recogniser and orientation system and then updating his measurements with feedback from his range-finder, before spitting out the 'danger area' for both sets of pressure pads onto a projection of the corridor, which he could share over the commlinks to the rest of the team.
"Ok, I'm pretty sure I can jump that… Aswon, you and Shimazu, too. But yeah, that's a good jump for you guys." Hunter gestured towards Marius and Tads. "Maybe one of us could be on either side and try to throw you over, and help catch you the other side. Still a bit of a stretch though…"
"How far above the ground did we keep you on the roof, when you swung down Tads?"
"About a metre and a half at a guess, Aswon? I wasn't concentrating on the distance really, just watching the plants for any change in activity."
"Ok, Hunter… can you modify your sketch, draw a line from the plants a metre and a half long, make an arc across the corridor. How much room does that give us top and bottom?"
"Gimme a minute." They waited while Hunter scanned the corridor, double checking his figures and then updated the plan, showing two arcs, one at ground level and one near the ceiling, both of which were far enough away from the plant that assuming it was the same as the stuff on the roof, should be clear.
"Ok, so Tads – if you can levitate someone up to the ceiling and along, keeping them in that top shaded area – they're far enough away from the plant that we should be fine. Same for the bottom, but there's less margin for error for wanting to keep clear of the pressure pad. But that's a possible way…"
"As long as they don't have more of that moss up in the roof space or floor ducting!" Tads pointed out.
That proved to be impossible to check, not without ripping up the carpet and floor they were standing on, and the space above the ceiling tiles looked to be the expected jumble of light fittings, air pipes, sprinkler distribution tubes and other building fabric.
"I've got an idea. Marius – have you got an air duster or some other canister with a propellant in it. If we spray the plant with a long concentrated blast, the propellant will chill the air. We can frost-blast it, and kill it off. Then Tads can use her magic to get us past the pads."
"Excellent idea, Shimazu. I can do you one better – I have a chiller spray, designed to make components shrink on the board and help you fit them or remove them more easily." Marius dug about in his toolbox and then handed over the canister to Shimazu, who set off down the corridor at a swift pace.
"Won't he set off the pads, though?" Hunter asked in alarm.
"No, one of his talents is being able to walk without trace – you've seen him before on the snow or the beach, being smug as he walks about without sinking."
"But that's magic init? Won't it set off the plant?"
"No, because it's his magic, on him – he should be able to mask it. He can't do any other magical things while he's concentrating on hiding it… but he should be able to cover the power that's he's using."
"I wish it had bloody rules!" Hunter exclaimed, unconsciously echoing Marius's earlier thoughts.
"It does!" Aswon exclaimed, watching as Shimazu started to blast the plant with the freezing spray. "Just sometimes the rules are complicated and difficult to explain." He cocked his head to one side as he heard a quiet little hum, almost like someone trying to blow a whistle using a blade of grass. It quickly faded away as Shimazu liberally frosted the plant pot, fading into silence. Shimazu shook the can up a little, then tucked it into an armpit to warm it back up and headed for the second set of pressure pads and the second plant to repeat the process. "I think it's safe to move past the first one now, though, Tads."
The shaman started to levitate them over the pads, keeping them on the far side of the corridor and with the maximum distance between them and the plant, just in case. By the time she'd gotten everyone over the first set of pads, Shimazu had finished killing the second plant, leaving the pot full of frosted and brittle leaves. They checked the map of the floor and hurried on, working their way down towards Angel's office, with Marius working his own type of magic on the security doors they found along the way, until they came to a large and imposing set of double doors with a brass plaque on the wall to the side, indicating that they'd reached their destination. The security lock here was a notch above those they'd encountered along the way, and Marius got to work on running a bypass, taking his time and making sure that he wasn't surprised by any nasty little tricks the designers had left for him.
"Kai, we're at the office. Going to be a few minutes to get in, then we can start planting the evidence."
Kai had been sitting at the reception desk, scanning the monitors and listening to the conversation over his ear-bud. He didn't have any suggestions on how to get past the pads that would help, so he'd kept quiet, and instead watched as the ork moved around the gym, working out on the various machines. He did seem to stick to a series of weights that seemed reasonable to Kai, the kind of things that would give him a good work out – which definitely put him on the weaker end of the ork scale. Of course if he was a mage as Tad's mind probe had revealed, that meant nothing – you didn't have to be strong to cast a killer fireball…
Just as Aswon's message came in, the doors on the north side opened up, and the ork wandered in, a gym bag in one hand and a towel around his neck. Black hair was plastered over his rough skin, and his shoulders glistened with sweat.
"Hey you! There's no soap in the changing rooms!" His voice was loud and harsh – and more than a little hostile. Kai glanced over at him noting that it wasn't just his voice that was hostile, but his body language as well. Shoulders were tensed and his hands half clenched by his side. His large and bulky head was thrust forward, jaw tensed and his dark eyes glared at Kai as if wanting to provoke him into a fight.
Kai took in the picture, trying to read the body language and posture, and his mind raced frantically as he did a 'cold read' on the ork. Orks and trolls were commonly thought of as stupid – though that was not something that Kai believed for a moment, not after spending a year with Hunter. But while they commonly were less well developed, that was probably as much due to their appearance and shorter life-spans, and the social dynamics at work. Nobody wanted a six year old ork in their primary school, not when they were as big as a sixteen year old human, ready to enter the workforce. That's why they commonly didn't get an education, and all the advantages that gave a child – and that's why they commonly weren't as well educated as humans, elves and dwarves, and ended up working dirty, dangerous and manual jobs that didn't require much in the way of complex skills.
But what if someone had been discovered that had talent… what then? Being part of the 1% of the population that any kind of magical gift would elevate you to being useful to a corporation. Being in the 1% of that 1% that actually had the full powers of a magical caster, rather than just someone able to see the spirit realm or be a slightly better athlete than others – that made you special. Really special – and valuable. And what happens if you take someone from the bottom 1% of society and catapult them to the top, thanks to a weird fluke of their genetics?
Kai was willing to bet that that kind of activity was going to land you with a big chip on your shoulder. Feelings that you constantly had to prove yourself, or fight an uphill struggle against the other races, and other people in the corporate structure. The kind of constant low grade political warfare that would make you angry and antagonistic towards everyone you met. He schooled his face carefully and then sprang to his feet, just as the mage was gathering breath to launch a further verbal assault at him for not answering.
"Sir, I'm very sorry, sir. This is unacceptable for someone of your position to have to deal with. I will contact the maintenance team as soon as I can, and discuss this with the manager, and get the situation dealt with at once. My apologies that you have to bring this to my attention. Is there anything else I can do for you at the moment?"
He shaped his voice carefully, making sure it oozed sincerity, respect and obedience, with not a single trace or edge of sarcasm anywhere. He saw the brief flicker of surprise on the ork's features, and then a flush of pleasure at being dealt with so politely and attentively, at being taken for a senior and valuable member of the corporation, and not just a 'trogg'.
"No, that's all. Carry on." Kai nodded politely, and remained almost at a stance of attention as the mage nodded to him and then headed off to the east, going through the security doors that lead towards the area allocated for magical activity on the floorplans.
"You ok, Kai?"
"All clear Aswon, just dealing with something here, but it's sorted. Carry on."
"Ok, we're in the office, planting the documents now…"
Marius had gotten them through the doors and into the office – though the term 'office' was a little underwhelming for the space they entered. It felt like the room was as large as a tennis court, split up into various areas with low furniture and some partition walls. A comfortable seating area was laid out with large settees and a low coffee table, big enough to comfortably seat ten people for relaxed discussions, while another area had a pair of desks and a small bookshelf, perhaps an area where some assistants or guests could perform some work for their corporate master. On the other wall was a small but luxuriously appointed bathroom and a small room with a bed raised high on a central pillar – either somewhere to sleep after a late night meeting, or possibly an area for a private massage or some other kind of beauty treatment. But taking up pride of place in the corner of the building was the main office area, with a massive desk that almost rivalled the one in the reception area cutting across the corner. Behind it a complicated powered chair sat facing away from the corner of the building, across the enormous desktop and the three much simpler chairs that visitors could use. A computer terminal was built into the desk itself, a very high-end and powerful unit, no doubt the latest and greatest system that Novatech currently had on the market.
Around the office space were sculptures and paintings in ornate frames, wooden carvings and tribal artefacts, hand woven rugs and shawls, items that no doubt signified great wealth and power.
"Maybe we should have bought Kai in," Hunter quipped. "Though possibly it's a good idea that we didn't, or he'd have us lifting half this stuff to sell on the black market." He moved over to the desk and started to examine the terminal with interest, examining the system and checking the connections. The guts of the system were integrated into the desk, but there was a power and data feed coming out of the bottom, connected into a subtle floor box. Lifting the lid on the floor box, Hunter could see the power cable plugged into the distribution unit, and the data cable snaking down and plugged into a socket with a red label attached, next to two more empty sockets, with blue and then grey labels. "Don't know for certain, but I think she's on the VIP or secure network, looking at the setup. She might have access to all kinds of stuff…"
"Well, I've just checked under the keyboard, and there's no password there. So I'm not sure how you'll get in. Why isn't her password under the keyboard. It always is on those shows you've made me watch on the trideo!" Tads seemed a little miffed that the reality of their infiltration didn't match her limited viewing experience.
"Maybe she didn't read the script properly, Tads." Hunter crawled out from under the desk and checked the keyboard himself. "Ahh – password activated, but there's also a biometric scanner. Given her position, I bet she's just got it set for a quick thumbprint scan to let her in. Probably can't be doing with remembering complex passwords."
"So we need her thumb to get in?" Aswon called out, as he carefully stuffed the forged documents into hiding places behind some of the books in the shelf near the desk.
"Yeah – but we may be able to work something out." He looked over a wooden carving of an antelope head that rested on the corner of the desk, shining a UV light over it and then pointing at a smudge on the neck, right were someone would hold onto it and rotate it in circles idly if they were distracted by a phone call and their hands needed something to fidget with. "If we can find a good print, we can probably lift it, and then map it over one of our thumbs. Needs to be on a live, flesh and blood digit to get a temp and pulse reading, as well as matching the pattern."
"What about a glass bauble?" Aswon pointed at some kind of globe that contained a swirling pool of ink suspended over a miniature scene. Hunter headed over and shone the UV torch on it from all angles, and highlighted what looked like a near perfect thumbprint.
"Perfect!"
Hunter fiddled with some kind of solvent and a clear section of tape, and then lifted the print carefully from the glass, checking to make sure it retained its position exactly, then applied it onto a small wax pad and pressed down briefly, before peeling off the tape and holding it up to the light. The wax pad was passed to Shimazu, who pulled out the slender set of lockpicks and bent over carefully, scraping away at the faint markings left by the tape, building up a three dimensional sculpt of the thumbprint. It was painstaking work, but Shimazu had a delicate touch, and worked quickly to carve out the whorls and loops in the waxy material. When it was done, he carefully levered out the thin wax layer and moulded it over his own thumb, then delicately placed it over the scanner built onto the side of the keyboard.
[Logon accepted. User Desiree, A. Logon at 01:38, 02/04/61. System initialising]
"Good job. Out the way though now, please." Hunter squeezed into the chair as soon as Shimazu moved, and grabbed the mouse in his gloved hand, moving it around uncertainly as he struggled to get it lined up correctly with the images on the screens. "Ugh, how does anyone work like this, without a jack?"
"It's probably a status symbol and she doesn't really use it for anything. But she has to have one, because she's the boss!" Aswon muttered. "Hey – this… she shouldn't have these!" He looked at a set of hunting javelins carefully displayed on a stand. "At least I'm pretty certain she shouldn't. These signify a great hunter, someone who has claimed a solo kill of a dangerous predator!" He glared at the wooden weapons, and then started to glance around the room, really examining the artwork and pieces. The more he took in, the more he was certain that Angel or someone on her behalf had been on a very unethical shopping trip and had stolen a bunch of things she had no right to have from half a dozen different tribal peoples all across Nigeria.
"Ok, I'm into the storage area. Now, we probably want to be careful – if we poke around too much it may set off some security alerts. Someone will wonder why she's online at this time of the morning, or wanting to get all the current server passwords if that's not something she can normally access. But I can probably get some good stuff. Anything in particular you want me to grab?"
"A floorplan for whatever floor the server room is on." Marius said quickly.
"A copy of her emails and messages for the last two years, particularly if they have the keywords 'spaceport', 'mountain' or 'government' in them." Aswon added.
"Anything she might have for retirement plans or indications of hidden bank accounts?" Tads suggested.
"Alright, that's probably enough. Give me sixty seconds…" He plugged his own deck into one of the ports on the terminal and the team waited while activity lights danced and flashed and a progress meter flickered as megapulses of data were exfiltrated from the corporate network onto the external storage. The progress bar was covered over by an image that Hunter quickly maximised to fill the entire screen, showing a layout of the 9th floor.
"Right, server room is here, pretty much under where the gym is by the looks of things. Probably makes sense with the cooling needs and data links, they want access to the main building riser, and that's going to be where they also wanted to put the showers and changing rooms from the gym and the VIP kitchen and stuff."
"We have everything we need here?" Aswon glanced around, making sure the documents he'd planted were well hidden behind the books and folders, but could be easily discovered by a thorough search, but also that nothing else was going to betray their identity.
"All clear, ready to move out." Marius had collected all of his tools and was waiting by the door, ready to remove the bypass and let the doors lock behind them as they left. Hunter unplugged his deck and set the terminal back to locked, then wiped down the surface behind him, making sure he didn't leave any trace of his presence behind. He stuffed his deck back into the box and hustled out of the door, Shimazu and Tads on his heels, with Aswon close behind. Marius swung the door closed, yanking out the bridging cable from the lock, and a moment later they heard the clunk as the magnetic bar slid down into the door frame, locking behind them.
"Kai, heading on our way back to you, ETA two minutes." Marius announced, and the team hurried back the way they had come, heading for the reception area.
