“Your Majesty, the military transport has docked and is awaiting your arrival.”
Victoria didn’t bother looking up. “Have it stand by.”
“And I’ve just received confirmation that the building has been evacuated of all non-security staff.
She nodded, hardly listening.
Her mind was on Quentin. Whatever it was he had planned, Alexander found it funny, and his sense of humor made her stomach churn.
Currently, Sakhr, Sibyl, and Alex were lugging an assembler down the service stairwell. It carried like an oversized couch. They had to hold it sideways to get it through doors.
Four floors down, Alex had them set it down in the rear lobby and go up for the next.
Quentin sat cross-legged before the first assembler, so involved with the tablet that he hardly noticed the others return. Victoria frequently visualized his design: pipes, or bars. They had notches at points along the length where it looked like they might fit together with one another. Some notches allowed for more angular connections.
It was scaffolding of some kind. It was taking him a while just to make that. The assembler’s local library was so bare-bones that he’d had to waste minutes piecing together low-level molecular fuse instructions just to make the metal he needed.
Victoria checked her phone. Eighteen minutes and Stephano’s men would coast in from the stratosphere, suited up and ready to go. Maybe Quentin could print the pieces in time, but he wouldn’t have time to assemble it—whatever it was.
She could move earlier…
Quentin and Christof were alone while the others were carrying the machines. She could put a team in the elevators, bring them up, and nab those two while Sakhr was away. Christof also carried their tortoise hostages. Sakhr would lose his leverage.
But it had too much chance of failure. Even if security could get a team ready in time, Sibyl would sense people coming up the elevator. Her range was substantially farther than any exemplar, and even Victoria herself. Sakhr could be up the stairs and in the lobby before the elevator doors would open.
Of course, if Victoria herself went up there, Sibyl wouldn’t sense her coming. She could destroy Quentin’s machine and be gone before they could react.
Victoria dismissed the idea. Too much risk.
She watched the others drag the second machine down the stairs. They all gasped and wheezed. Two floors down, Alex dropped his end of the machine. “Okay, forget it,” he said. “This is good enough, let’s just get it in here.” He opened the door to that floor’s lobby.
“You said this goes four floors down,” Sakhr said.
“Never mind that. We’ll just leave it here and carry the supplies down as they assemble.”
“We’re not going to be lazy. If Quentin wants these on the fifty-sixth floor, then we’ll put them there.” Sakhr lifted his end.
“I know the plan. Okay? It doesn’t need to be exactly the fifty-sixth floor. So let’s drop this off here. If Quentin says to finish, then we’ll finish, but I know he won’t.”
Sakhr frowned. “Fine.” He maneuvered his end toward the door.
Alex wiped sweat from his face…
…then when Sakhr wasn’t looking, he held his finger to his lips and shook his head at Sibyl.
She had looked like she was about to say something, but that stopped her.
So it was a ruse.
Alex wanted the machine on that floor. Sibyl could sense the falsehood of his supposed exhaustion, and he kept her from mentioning that.
Why?
What plan needed one machine on fifty-six, and another on fifty-eight?
As they navigated the doorway, Victoria’s mind jumped back to Quentin. He’d finished whatever he was designing. Now he and Christof were carrying the fuser assembler out of the room and down the hall. They dropped it off in Victoria’s servant corridor, just outside the service elevator. As they finished, Sakhr and the others returned.
Quentin looked at Alex. “You guys ready to get this one downstairs?”
Alex shook his head and rested his hands on his knees. “No. We’re done with that. We’ll just bring the materials down as they assemble.”
Quentin shrugged. “Sure. Whatever. I guess we can get them started.”
Oh, Quentin. He cannot lie, not like Alex. If Victoria had any doubts that this wasn’t exactly what Quentin wanted, Quentin dispelled them the moment he didn’t throw a fit about the others’ incompetence.
So why orient the machines like this, vertically aligned, with a floor between each?
She could only watch on…
Christof took over watching Winnie, Helena, and the other tortoise. He’d found a box to keep them in. While the jostling was nauseating, Winnie preferred Christof to Alex as a captor. He was gentle. When Helena accidentally flipped trying to peer over the lip, he righted her.
Winnie didn’t need to crane to see what was going on.
She’d watched the struggle to move the machines downstairs. Now, they stood around as Quentin hooked the tablet into the assembler and fiddled with the menu. The machine hummed.
“There we go,” he said. “Let’s go.” He headed for the stairs.
“We’re just leaving that there?” Sakhr asked.
“We’ll come back for the stuff later.”
Sakhr eyed Quentin as they descended. On the next floor, Quentin set that machine to assemble the another set of notched bars. Same with the fifty-sixth floor. Whatever he was making, he was making three of them.
Quentin led them back up to Victoria’s private suite. “All right, now the next part is a little tricky,” he said. “On the balconies, I bet we’ll find reflexors set up around the banisters.”
“What are those for?” ask Sakhr.
“Security. They push things away from the balcony: birds, bullets, would-be assassins. The nodes will be lining the rim of the balcony floors. We need as many as we can get.”
“I meant why do we need them?”
“Because I can’t assemble those things. I mean, I could. But they’re complicated. It would take me too long to design. No more questions.”
They found Victoria’s bedroom. It was filled with rich, dark woods and tapestries. There was a fireplace large enough to stand in. It had real ash beneath its grate, and a chute leading to a lonesome chimney on top of the tower. The bed had four posts at the corners with adjoining draperies for privacy. It redefined the term king-sized.
“Jesus…” Quentin eyed the decor. Everyone else looked about like guests in a museum. On the balcony, Quentin inspected the base of the guard rails. “Good. Here they are. You guys start on the other side.”
The others drifted closer, though only Alex helped. The nodes were strung together like Christmas lights. Once they’d detached a length, Quentin pried a node open.
“I need a… yeah.”
Before he could finish, Alex handed him a screwdriver. He tinkered with its insides, then popped it closed. Holding it at arms length, thrust it downward. Instead of smashing it against the floor, Quentin’s arm moved as though he were pushing his arm through a viscous fluid. His muscles strained.
“Perfect,” he said. He started on the next node.
Sakhr frowned at the device. “I don’t understand. You just unplugged those. How is it getting power?”
“They’re getting it from the fall. These are reflex nodes.” Seeing Sakhr’s confusion, Quentin continued. “Okay, do you know about the law of energy conservation?”
Sakhr nodded.
“That’s what this is. When a node generates a repulse field, it pushes everything inside that field away from itself. How much energy it expends is relative to how much mass is in the field. So a node projects into air, it doesn’t spend much energy. If something enters that field, then suddenly there’s more mass to push. More energy is expended. That’s how repulse nodes detect things, like with Stiller fields. You with me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, so if the node pushes on something that’s at rest, it adds kinetic energy relative to the node. Electricity into kinetic energy, right? Energy is conserved. But when mass enters the field moving toward the node, the node pushes on the mass, slowing it down. It’s expending electric energy to reduce relative kinetic energy, so where is the energy going? Heat. Then one day I figured out how to optimize repulse nodes, like this.” He held up a node. “When this pushes on something such that it slows the mass relative to it, it converts the kinetic energy into electricity. That’s why these little things don’t need power, because pushing mass through their field toward the node collects energy. Then it uses that energy to push back.”
He pointed the node downward and dropped it. The node drifted slowly down at first, until it rotated. Then it arced and fell.
“If you have three oriented like tripod legs, they won’t tilt and fall. That’s basically how most drifting ships work. In theory, with perfect efficiency reflex nodes, they would stay floating forever once it pushed against something that doesn’t flow, like earth. Too bad nothing is ever perfect, but these are still great for gliding.”
Sakhr tensed and spun toward Quentin. “No!”
“What?”
“Is your plan to… are you building an aircraft?”
Quentin grinned broadly. “No questions.”
“Absolutely not. We are not flying on some cobbled-together gliding device.”
“I thought you said you trust me.”
“Not with this! I know how complicated flying machines are? You expect me to believe you can build one out of salvaged parts? I don’t care what your flair is. That can’t possibly work.”
“What if that is what I’m doing,” said Quentin. “Would you rather stay here?”
“Look, look.” Alex addressed Sakhr. “Sure, this isn’t the safest mode of travel. It probably doesn’t meet your standard ‘point zero zero one basis points‘ of acceptable risk. Quentin doesn’t have time to perform enough test flights to satisfy you. And sure, there’s a slight chance of instantaneous death. But since the alternative is to wait here until Victoria moves on us, what the hell?” He put his hand on Sakhr’s shoulder. “Tell you what. How bout I find you a helmet.”
Sakhr slapped away Alex’s hand. “Is this what you found so damn funny? There is no chance in hell I’ll fly out of here in a ramshackle machine.” He faced Quentin. “Change the plan.”
“What would you rather do?” asked Alex. “Blast our way through the security lobby? Fight all of her people? You think that’s safer? We need a head start, and we won’t get that walking out of here on foot. I’ve seen Quentin’s mind. What he’s building is risky, sure, but he knows what he’s doing. He’s got his power. Don’t you trust our powers?”
“This is insanity.”
“Just remember. My life is on the line too, and I agreed to this.”
“And you’re insane.”
“Maybe. Seventeen years as a leather pet can do that. Are you in?”
Sakhr scowled at him. “We’ll see.”
We’ll see, he said.
Surely Sakhr would know better than to go along with such a dumb plot. Surely his desperation hadn’t exceeded his aversion to risk. Quentin should know better too. He may have insight into physics, but that doesn’t make him a good pilot… unless the idiot considered his video game skills as experience.
This still didn’t explain why they bothered separating the assemblers.
She visualized what the machines were producing. Each had only made three or four bars that could latch together, hardly enough to build a glider for one, much less for all of them. Since Stephano would deploy in… (Victoria checked the time) six minutes. Quentin clearly thought he had more time than he actually had.
She called for Gandara. “Captain.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“If an unregistered vehicle were to leave from the tower, would the grid be able to catch it?”
“Unregistered vehicle?”
“Like a hang glider.”
“It should, ma’am. The Lakiran campus has a sensor grid starting at the eighth floor and up. Any unregistered mass greater than twenty kilograms will be snagged and delivered to a holding area.”
“Where is that?”
The military base at Leguan Island.”
“Can you arrange for the system to separate the objects and isolate them from one another?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Call the base. Have them stand by. Tell them that if the grid should deliver anything, that they are to isolate the target with wall bots and stand by. They are not to approach.
“Yes, ma’am.” He got to work.
Not that Victoria could allow it to come to that. If Quentin did try to fly off, the grid would not pick up small things, like falling tortoises. That was unacceptable.
She’d capture them all and figure out their plan later. This nonsense needed to end now.
Quentin set down the string of reflexors. “There. That’s done. Time to get the supplies.”
Sakhr stood and headed for the door.
“Not you,” Quentin said.
“What? You need help carrying the supplies upstairs, no?”
“I do.” Quentin ripped some drapes off Victoria’s bed. “So take these and go to the roof while I get the poles. We’ll put it all together up there.”
“What about those reflexor nodes?”
Quentin shrugged. “I’m taking them.”
Sakhr narrowed his eyes.
Alex came came over and took the drapes. “Stop worrying, Sakhr. I’ll be with you. Quentin will meet us on the roof.”
“I do need somebody to help me,” Quentin replied.
Alex looked around. “Sibyl, you’re wearing a strong body. Help Quentin carry the poles up. Christof, get the tortoises and come with us.”
So they split up. Quentin and Sibyl headed downstairs while Alex, Christof, and Sakhr headed to the roof.
“The marines are dropping now, Your Majesty,” Stephano said.
“There are three people on the roof. One is my daughter. You need to neutralize her immediately.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And another has a handgun, but you must not hurt her. Incapacitate, disarm, and isolate. That’s all.
“Understood.”
Victoria was micromanaging again. She couldn’t help herself. The action would start any moment, and Quentin was up to something…
Sibyl followed Quentin to the elevator lobby on Victoria’s private floor. The assembler there had produced five rods which lay in a row in the dispenser tray. Each was an arm’s length. Quentin bundled them up and wrapped the cable of reflexors around them, making sure the reflexors faced outward.
“What are you doing?” asked Sibyl.
“You’ll see,” Quentin replied. “You’ve got to promise me that if I tell you to do something, you’ll do it. Don’t hesitate. Okay?”
“Okay.” Sibyl sounded unsure.
“Good.” Having bundled the bars together, he let them drop. They lowered into the dispenser tray gently, as though the rods were trying not to make a clatter. “Let’s leave this here for a minute. And get down to the others.”
He headed for the stairs. Though Sibyl frowned in confusion, she followed.
Alex was on the roof first. He went straight to Victoria’s hopper and opened the hatch.
“The craft?” Sakhr said. “I thought we couldn’t fly this.”
“We can’t, but that’s not—”
“What are those?” Christof was pointing up.
Six black dots were rapidly approaching from the sky.
“Get inside!” Sakhr dashed for the rooftop door, but Alex caught his shirt, nearly yanking him off his feet.
The black dots expanded to become deployment pods. Each slammed onto the rooftop along the edge. Their hatches exploded outward. Marines jumped out. Each wore full covering military gear, complete with a respirator mask over their faces. They all brandished rifles.
“Inside!” Sakhr yelled.
“No. The ship. Get in the ship.” Alex pulled him toward the hatch.
The marines open fired. Barbed flechettes ricocheted off the hopper. One struck Sakhr in the side. Screaming, he crumpled.
Alex drew his security pistol fired wildly at the marines. They evaded.
Turning back, he grabbed Sakhr’s collar and pulled him toward the hopper. “Help me,” he yelled. Christof tossed the box of tortoises into the hopper and helped Alex with Sakhr.
Before they could pull him aboard, a marine fired electrified barbs at the hatch. Christof crumpled into the hopper. Sakhr fell to the platform concrete.
Alex returned fire. Two bullets punched into the marine’s reinforced armor, causing him to stumble back. Other marines approached. With Christof incapacitated, Alex couldn’t lift Sakhr fast enough. He pushed him out of the way and slammed the shuttle door closed. Inside, he frantically yanked a switch that looked like it might be a lock, but kept a constant pull on the door handle, just in case they could open it anyway.
Seconds passed. Tentatively, he let the hatch door go. When nothing happened, he scrabbled to the cockpit.
Out the window, he saw the marines dragging Sakhr toward their deployment capsules. They shoved him inside one and slammed the lid. The capsule lifted into the sky like a buoy released from the ocean bottom.
“Ta ta, old man. I never said there wasn’t risk.”
He fumbled with the dashboard. Once he’d turned the hopper on, he sat back and waited.
But what was Alexander waiting for?
Whatever it was, it had to do with whatever Quentin was doing. It made Victoria nervous.
Her mental gaze of Alex was diverted by Captain Stephano.
“They’ve rescued your daughter,” he said. “We’ve sent her off in a deployment pod. Other hostages have holed up in your shuttle.”
“Good. Leave them alone for now. Have your team proceed downstairs. There are two in the service stairwell. I want them stopped.”
“Understood, ma’am.”
She nearly hit the call end button, but stopped. “And keep my daughter isolated. No one opens her pod until I say so.”
Quentin was opening the door to the fifty-sixth floor when Sibyl snapped her head up to look at the ceiling.
“People just arrived,” she said.
“What? How many?”
“A dozen, maybe. They’re fighting. Sakhr is panicking.”
“God fucking dammit,” Quentin growled. “I needed two more minutes. That’s all. Fuck.” He glared at the door. “Fuck it. We’re still doing this. I’m not going back in a damn lizard. Come on.”
The assembler in the lobby had produced five poles, just like the others. Quentin ran past it to the service elevator. Popping a release catch along the door frame, pried open the door. “Okay. Grab those sticks in the tray and throw them down the shaft.”
“What?” said Sibyl. “Down the elevator?”
“Do it now.”
Sibyl grabbed the bars. Her hands recoiled at first, but she tried again and tossed them through the door. They clattered down the shaft.
Quentin released the elevator door and ran toward the stairs. “Come on. Next ones.”
Sibyl hurried after, cradling her hands. “Why were they so hot?”
Quentin held the stairwell door open for her. As she passed, he mumbled, “Because they’re radioactive.”