Chapter Twenty-Six

Taylor’s plan was, in a word, stupid. She knew it, her crew knew it, and even HK-47 knew it, though he seemed more than willing to go through with it despite its utter stupidity. Stupidity that ended with her being squeezed into the back of a flying taxi with eight droids and a whole lot of bugs.

“Comment: Suicidal merely means the chances of success are low, and failure means avoiding any consequences.”

“Unless you have something smart to say, HK-47, then shut it,” she said.

Next to her, R3-C2 warbled and chirped. The six battle droids, each one carrying a large backpack, shifted a little. Though they were probably only moving to counter the way the taxi shifted beneath them.

“Suggestion: Learn to stop questioning your betters you wheeled garbage disposal unit or I’ll see about turning you into an actual trash heap. Comment: The irony would be enjoyable.”

Taylor’s crack team wasn’t full of team players, or crack anything. Still, she figured that she had a decent chance at succeeding. Her plan reminded her a whole lot of hitting the PRT headquarters in Brockton Bay, only this time the headquarters belonged to an interplanetary slave-owning corporation that made enough money to subsidise the creation of entire factory-planets.

That was--if her plan succeeded--going to change.

Their flying taxi-van came to a smooth stop and the droid pilot at the front turned around and spoke to them in basic. Taylor stepped out, R3-C2 on her heels. The Battledroids moved out next, keeping to a tight formation with their blasters pointing to the ground. Then HK-47 shot the driver’s head off and stepped out as well.

The taxi spun out of control and flew off into a building a dozen floors down.

“Really HK?” she asked.

“Justification: He asked for a tip.”

The Czerka headquarters on Anoat was an imposing building. Probably the single largest skyscraper Taylor had ever seen, and certainly the largest on the planet. It wasn’t pretty though. The tower was a large oval with sharpened sides rising up to a fine point with a hole through the last dozen floors at the top like a gigantic eye. They had obviously read the evil mega corporation textbook.

The landing area they had been brought to was on, according to the large stencil on the ground, the one hundred and twentieth floor. The server room they wanted to get to was eighty-eight floors up. The office of the CEO was, of course, all the way up on the three hundredth floor.

They had their work cut out for them.

“Try talking first,” Taylor said as she started walking ahead. She made sure her mask was on tight even as the first security team moved onto the landing pad to see what was going on. Two droids that looked to be mass-produced Czerka models and a single human in a grey uniform.

“Greetings: Hello,” HK-47 said. He raised a blaster pistol and took off the heads of the two security droids with two shots that came so close together they might as well have been fired at the same time.

“S-stop!” the human guard said.

Taylor didn’t oblige. He moved into her range and his demeanor shifted as she took over his body. She had him turn around and face the entrance while she paused over the security droids. “Are they worth looting?” she asked.

“Suggestion: Looting is usually carried out after the assault is done. These useless meatbag-designed piles of scrap are only armed with stun weapons.”

Taylor tore the gun out of one security droid’s hands, then tossed it to HK-47. “Use it,” she said.

“Complaint: This is unfair treatment.”

“Now you can shoot the civilians without me getting angry,” she said as she picked up the other blaster, and reholstered her own pistol. She was beginning to agree with HK-47’s frequent assertions that the only good weapon was more weapons. Unfortunately she only had three pistols on her person at that moment, two in thigh holsters and a third tucked into the thickly padded jacket she had purchased for the day.

An extra rifle or two wouldn’t hurt, she reasoned. Her battle droids had their small rifles and, at HK-47’s insistence, a small compact pistol tucked in the small of their backs which they could grab with either arm.

HK-47 himself was... Taylor eyed the starship canon jutting over his shoulder and all the way down to his shin, then the large rifle slung cross-ways to it. He had smaller rifles clamped to his legs and blaster pistols tucked under his arms. She suspected he still had a thermal detonator hidden away somewhere too.

And now he had a stun rifle.

“Let’s get moving,” Taylor said through the guard’s mouth. The less her voice was heard the less likely it could be used to track her. The battle droids had cheap long coats slung over their skeletal frames, with hoods pulled up over their robotic faces and even HK-47 had a long trenchcoat on, one with many pockets that she suspected would soon be filled with purloined weapons.

They moved into the lobby to find a large room with a security desk blocking access to a central shaft where Taylor could just barely see the levels above and below across from a set of rails. It reminded her a little of the plaza at some open-concept shopping malls, but from the plans she had seen the shaft rose two dozen stories.

“Please pass through the security scanner,” a young woman said. She had the fixed smile of a retail employee as she gestured to a metallic archway flanked by a pair of security droids.

“No,” she told HK-47 who was raising his new toy.

“Comment: Spoilsport.”

Taylor walked through the security gate right behind the guard she had taken over and ignored the alarms that started blaring after she passed.

“Um, miss, if you have... any... weapons...” the woman said, her smile growing decidedly queasy as Taylor, who wasn’t bothering to hide her weapons, was followed by her battle droids. “Um.”

“Leave,” Taylor said.

She noticed the security droids starting to move and sighed when HK-47 shot them both with the stun rifle, then, upon seeing it do little to the droids, bashed their heads in with the weapon’s stock.

“Hurry up,” she called after her droid friend.

Taking the elevators--the turbolifts--would have been a whole lot faster.

Instead they took the stairs. Two of her battle droids carried R3-C2 while the flaps of their backpacks opened to unleash a swarm of butterfly-like bugs that flew to every camera they could reach.

Stairs were nice, didn’t stop working, and weren’t controlled by anyone. Six flights up she was beginning to change her opinion on stairs. By the tenth she ordered a stop. Her legs were burning and the security guard she was still puppeting was red in the face and about to pass out.

“We’re taking the turbolift from here,” she said.

“Comment: Weak.”

Taylor opened the door a crack, let a few bugs fly in to make sure the area was clear, then moved in. The floor they were on was an office space, rows of cubicles where wide-eyed workers watched them pass.

A manager-looking sort stood in their path. “What is the meaning of this?” he asked.

Then he too was in Taylor’s range.

“They have right to be here,” her guard said.

“They do?” the manager asked.

“Yes.”

It was the most awkward puppet show Taylor had ever seen, and she was the one with her hands in the puppets.

“I come with,” the manager said and followed after them as they moved deeper on the floor. They found a quiet spot with some bathrooms and Taylor sighed.

“HK-47, follow these two into the bathroom, try out your new toys.”

“Affirmation: With pleasure!”

A minute and two dull whumps of a stun rifle later they were moving again. She sent a few bugs into the turbolift and set them over the rather obvious cameras, then moved in with her entire group. R3-C2 navigated the menu to get them to the right floor.

The turbolift hummed along and Taylor expected it to stop suddenly at any moment, but to her surprise they arrived at the right floor with no fuss.

“Comment: Czerka’s security has improved considerably. I haven’t killed a single employee in five minutes. Perhaps they learned something?”

“We’ll see,” Taylor said. She tapped R3-C2 on the head. “You know where to go?”

The droid chirped something that sounded more or less like an affirmative and started rolling ahead of them. Taylor and her other droids followed. Soon enough they reached a pair of thick doors that blocked their path. R3-C2 warbled at them.

“Observation: Security doors. Locked, obviously.”

“Damn,” Taylor said. There was a sort of intercom next to the door, but she didn’t like her chances of bluffing her way through. “Okay, everyone back up. HK-47, that canon of yours, think it’ll do something to that door?”

The droid looked at the door for a long time, then R3-C2 beeped and chirped. “Response: It is likely that the door will fail after repeated barrages. But as the droid suggests it would take some time.”

“How about the walls around the door?”

HK-47 reached over his shoulder, grabbed the cannon and brought it around. Taylor ducked around the nearest corner before he opened fire. Even shielded, she felt the rise in temperature as he fired away. Then the assassin droid stopped.

“Statement: Path cleared.”

The hole he had left wasn’t exactly pretty, but it was big enough to walk through. Taylor sent some bugs zipping through and deeper into the sealed off section only to find panicking personnel and a few security droids ambling about aimlessly.

“Good work. Droids ahead, and civilians. HK-47, you’re in first. Battledroids one through three, you go in after him. R3-C2, you’re with me, the rest come after, watch out backs.”

She waited for the chorus of ‘Roger-Roger’ to end before she started in.

The security in the server rooms was inversely impressive to that of the blast doors. The only resistance they met were half a dozen security droids that charged at them while firing madly at the first target they encountered and one brave employee with a holdout pistol.

Stun shots didn’t do anything but annoy HK-47 and the idiot with the holdout spent more time choking on bugs than firing. Taylor even got to test her new stun rifle only to find that it lacked any satisfying kick to it.

She wasn’t going to admit that to HK-47 even as she slung the rifle over her shoulder and pulled out a pistol. “R3-C2, lead the way.”

The server rooms were impressively huge. Towering banks of glowing machines with thousands of ports and displays and little whirling fans that make her coat flap around her distractingly and made sending bugs around a chore.

R3-C2 whistled something and moved over to a small control centre in the middle of the stacks of servers. A port moved out of the droid’s casing and plugged itself into the bank of computers.

A moment later the screens before them lit up. Some had camera feeds of slave pens, others factory floors. Maps and blueprints flashed by at lightning speeds on some screens and reams of data moved on others.

“You’re really digging into them, aren’t you?” Taylor asked.

The little droid whistled.

“Hey HK-47, is it customary to name a droid? Something other than a serial number?”

“Comment: Some sentimental fleshlings have done so.”

Taylor grinned and gave the droid next to her’s dome an affectionate pat. “I think I’m going to call you Tattletale,” Taylor said. “Now, start spilling some secrets.”