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 Way of the Warrior  (20 ratings)by Igor Raffaele Page 7 of 10 Either the assassin or his accomplices cut off the electornic surveillance mechanisms three hours ago, and it would not make sense to risk being discovered by waiting too long before entering into action. He still is not inside the compound: if he was, Jokonosa would be dead, and the whole block would be in uproar until the Yakuza found the culprit. The assassin is not planning to breach any the walls, or he would be done by now: even the most reinforced wall can only take so many explosive charges. I summon a map of the surrounding area, and start looking for likely access points an assassin would use, possibly one providing an escape route as well. To say the truth, I do not really need the map, as I have poured over those diagrams a long time ago, looking for a way to enter the fortified house and execute Jokonosa. In time I abandoned the idea, because an enemy alive can be neutralized if you know him well enough. Why kill a snake when you have your sandal on his head? The meticulous search still bears its fruits however, years down the line. There are two ways in that would give relatively easy access and reasonably safe escape routes: the foundations or the ceiling. I only really need the map for something to look ay while I churn my way through the problem, and decide which way to go. Every platform in the archology serves ad foundation for those above it, and ceiling for those below. Yokonosa could easily clear away people and buildings around his lair, but he could do nothing for the tower resting directly above his, and for the platform his own tower is resting on. Those are the two vulnerable spots of his whole cocoon, and they are definitely heavily guarded and under constant electronic surveillance. Only the electronic surveillance is knocked out for the moment, and it is hard to efficiently patrol every nook and cranny of a whole square mile of twisting hallways and corridors. On the platform above us is a heavily populated high class commercial district, and below us, the Abyss. As soon as the word comes to mind my thoughts become action and I speed towards the lower platforms, looking for the entrance I am hoping the assassin has only just made. There was an ancient religious text that was required reading back in the Temple. It was called the Bible, and it was the holy writing of the still extant and much reformed Christian religion. What I mostly remember about it are lurid descriptions of barrel loads of guts and crates of brains spilled during the bloody battles and holy acts, and a very vivid vision of Hell, the place where the undeserving went, to be forever tortured in an dark underground world of seari ng flames and pain. I used to think it might have been a bad place to go to, until I had heard of the archology's own modern version. The old attempts at describing an apocalyptic place make me laugh, nowadays. Every platform has its own ventilation and climatic control system, and its component systems are usually housed on the platform's own underside. It is in this world of perpetual fog from the cooling gas discarge ducts and pipes twisting like metal bowels, move the maintenance crews. They were dumped there more than a century ago, when the archology was founded, our own quaint version of the damned denizens of hell. They have very little contact with the rest of the archology's inhabitants, except for the supply shipments of food and spare parts, and so they slowly developed their own sub cultures and social structures. They have managed to extract a religion out of the maintenance necessary to keep the weather system operational; the senior technicians are treated with more respect than many other cults' priests, and spend their days dictating the laws governing each of the clans they organized themselves into, training the young, and of course repairing air filters and tightening loose screws. The underside of each platform is hell, and it is not the Catholic place of blood and torture, but the desolation of darkness eternal where the death of dreams is born. It makes for the perfect hiding place for criminals and smugglers, those able to stay away from the clans at any rate. No one here will notice a single black dressed figure making its way into one of the pipes, nor will they see it come out never to return. As cruise along the dark underbelly of my block, I look upon the nightmarish industrial sized pipes, dripping with the moss and dirt of decades like a waterfall killed in mid stride. After a few seconds of the almost holy spectacle of decay, I am certain that this is the way the Demon Shadow came, and all that's left is to find the actual entrance he used. His ship left burn marks on the ancient debris caked everywhere, so that I only have to follow the charred marks of civilization to my goal. I finally find his ship, a costly Silent Runner, near a huge power converter. The enormous mass humming like a crazed elephant sized bee is good protection: its noise would cover the battle manoevres a whole armoured division without any difficulties. My ship suddenly feels clumsy as I land it next to the Demon Shadow's own shiny, sleek vehicle. A few metres from the vehicles is a huge, gaping hole, a detonator discarded next to a pile of rubble. Some of the dust is still setting and I touch one of the metal reinforcement bars that once made this wall strong. They were warped by the explosion, they stick out out of the hole like an old woman's teeth, and they're still warm. Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001 Igor Raffaele, sffworld.com. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author. The author has submitted the work in accordance with and in agreement with the following Submission Guidelines. |
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