Hey everyone. This is the final installment. As usual, I'm loading all the chapters at one. Thanks for reading. -H
CHAPTER SEVEN
Shep moved through the corridor openly. Four lefts and a right and he would duck through the passage leading to the stairwell. The last four days had been chaos. He was wearing a uniform, passing himself as a shitstain officer of the usur, kalif rank. With falsified identification--very expensive--he'd gotten through the entrance security at the Manse. Layers of security.
Two men passed on his left, making the hand sign for his rank. Shep nodded. He found the stairwell and clattered down three floors to the subbasement. Passing through a door, he went down another hall. The Usur's Manse was really a huge compound. It was a complex maze with floors and floors of offices and living quarters and meeting rooms, all under constant guard. The archives were deserted, although he heard voices from somewhere to his left.
Shep moved quickly. He hated places like this. There was nowhere to go if things went wrong. Finding the door he was looking for, he ducked in. It led to another series of rooms. So far, Maeva's memory had been completely accurate.
He and Patrick had sat at the table after Maeva had gone to sleep. Patrick had helped him to plan the operation with the schematic in front of them. When Shep had realized how much she could remember, he'd gotten her different color fine-point pens and more paper and taped them together.
"How could she remember all this?" Patrick had said, shaking his head.
"Fuck if I know. She just does," Shep had said, keeping his finger on a line and following it.
When Shep arrived at the archives, he began searching the rows of tiny chips. His fingers were moving fast, looking for the coding and figuring where those kinds of records would be kept. His people had a general idea, but it was still going to be tricky to find them. The more time he spent here, the more likely he'd get noticed. Shep finally located the more specific rows he was looking for. He began scanning, looking for dates. He heard someone approaching on his right.
"Can I help you, Kalif? What are you looking for?"
The man made the hand sign for Kalif rank. Low ranking usur officer. Sandy hair, scar on his lip.
Prick
. "Ten-six and Twelve-six, Field Nineteen, sequential dating 4678 to 4690," Shep replied, since the man was being helpful.
The sandy-haired man stepped forward and scanned in the same area. "They are here, Kalif," the man said, pulling out a row of chips. "But it's against the regs to copy them or remove them from the archives. Anything in this area is Code-1 secure. You can tell by the stripe. What's your security clearance?"
Shep held out his badge and the man passed over it with a mobile scanner, looking into it. The resistance had paid a great deal to make sure Shep had that clearance.
"You can view them in one of the rooms, Kalif," the guy nodded, handing them to him. He suddenly looked closely at the area with the chips, and then back at Shep.
Shep tensed, looking around casually for witnesses. He focused as the man leaned in.
"I think I might know what you're looking for, Kalif," the usur officer said. "You wouldn't be the first to come searching for it. Word gets around. You want to see the one with the vanata, right?"
Shep slowly nodded, eyeing him.
What the fuck?
The usur officer turned his head. "Bas," he called. "You've got another one."
A man came out of a room and walked toward them. The sandy-haired man gave Shep a look that was part amusement, part contempt, and retreated down the hall to another door. He shut it.
"I'm Bastien, Kalif," the dark-haired man said, making the hand sign for kalif rank.
Shep studied him. The guy was lean, with sharp features. One of those shifty fuckers right at home in basements.
Bastien leaned in, speaking low. "You want to see the vanata, Kalif?" He leaned even closer when Shep nodded. "It'll cost you 6400, straight credit transfer. You still want to see it?"
"Yeah," Shep answered, his gut knotting. He suddenly knew exactly what he was supposed to be buying from this fucker.
Bastien led him to a private area down one corridor and then to another, and finally to a viewing room. Shep looked around. Nobody. The room had a chip copier. That would do. Bastien locked the door behind them and drew a chip from his breast pocket. He held it in his hand. He pushed a button on the panel and swiped the card with his security code on it. The blue screen on the far wall leapt to life.
"This chip is the only one of its kind, Kalif," Bastien said "It can't be copied or removed, so don't ask. It was supposed to have been destroyed with the others, but I have a buddy who saved it. You pay before you view it, straight transfer now and I check that the credits are there before I leave. It's worth it. Gorgeous, everything you've ever heard about vanata women, and she's the last one. The guards strip that beautiful young bitch's top bare to whip her, and she has got the sweetest tits--"
Shep punched him in the face. Bastien fell back and caught the arm of a chair. It spun. He fell onto his back. Shep's hand was throbbing and stinging as he walked two paces and stepped on his throat. The fucker squirmed and choked and clawed at his leg as Shep took out his pistol and screwed on the silencer. The man's eyes widened and Shep shot him. It was a neat hole and a messy exit, spraying the carpet.
Shep probably hadn't needed the silencer--the room was soundproofed, completely--but he didn't want his ears ringing for the next hour.
He stepped over the fucker, avoiding the blood and other shit, and pulled the security override device out of his pocket. Releasing a panel, he installed it into the chip copier. The device would use the laser on the reader to strip the chips of security tags so they could be removed from the building without setting off alarms. He would take all the originals. The security override was the newest tech, developed by his own people.
He fixed his eyes on the door and put the first chip into the copier and programmed it. In a moment, the machine beeped and he removed the stripped chip and replaced it with another. He had eleven.
When he was done, Shep bent to the dead man's hand and pulled out the chip the fucker had been holding. He placed it into the copier and set it to strip the security tags. He certainly wasn't going to leave it here for these pricks to jerk off to, and it wasn't like he could just grind it under his heel. The record chips were durable. They were made to withstand heat and pressure. He'd have to destroy it elsewhere.
Shep was cold and hyper-alert, but under it he was enraged. Even if he hadn't needed to kill the man at his feet, he would have murdered that fucker just on principle. When the machine chimed, he pulled out the chip and put it into a separate pocket. He untwisted the silencer and put it into another pocket. He holstered his pistol and pulled the security override device out. Handling it carefully, it went into a case in another pocket.
He waited, getting more angry. When he thought enough time had passed, he opened the door and came out into the corridor. He walked past office doors. The sandy-haired man met him in the hall. He was on his way to somewhere else and looking down at a scanner in his hands. Shep had been angling against the security cameras, but this man would definitely remember his face.
