Death Drop (69 page)

Dezmara decided the best thing to do would be to follow the golden path at her feet—a walkway like that had to lead somewhere important. She skirted the fountain, hands on the tops of the tools at her sides, and studied the layout in case things didn’t go as expected with Fellini once she was upstairs. The passage split the casino floor roughly in two. On her left was a sea of padded enclosures crowded with gamblers playing tanrue, a game with six dice where each player scored points based on their roll. Bets were taken every round, and the first player to reach a certain score won. To the right were rows of large tables where seated participants sat across from a dealer and glanced secretively at cards pinched between their fingers as they tried to calculate the odds of holding the best hand. Everywhere Dezmara could hear the sounds of dice ticking together, clacking plates of tolocnium piled on top of each other, and the thrilled shouts of winners and dejected jeers of the less fortunate.

The lines of games ended at a curving wall at the back of the room that ran the entire width of the chamber. The barrier was at least a hundred feet high with a wide, open door at its center. As Dezmara passed through the opening, the path darkened slightly in the shadow of two vertical partitions that sloped away on either side of her, and when the light returned, she was facing a circular bar. Two hard-looking fighters were scrapping it out in a gigantic holodex projection that hovered directly overhead. Oohs and ohs rang out in unison from the crowded stadium-style seats surrounding the watering hole as the warriors dealt each other vicious, bloodletting blows. An army of servers dotted the crowd, ferrying beverages and edibles to the fans.

The walkway led straight up to the bar and then circled around it on either side. She curved past the patrons seated around the tolocnium finned counter, all of them drinking potent concoctions and cheering on their favorite contestant. She passed several more paths—these not made of precious ore—that met up with the gilded ring from the various sections of the arena. She continued along the shining passage and walked out another corridor flanked by sloping walls. When she reached the end, Dezmara was looking at a closed door with the same three round windows as the grand, revolving entrance.

She produced the access box and ejected the prongs—this time without alarm—and inserted them into a control panel to her right. The door slid upward with a quiet hum and Dezmara walked into a well-decorated hallway. To the left and right were several doors marked ‘Private,’ and she guessed that they were entrances to suites in the arena. The walls were lined with couches flanked by lush plants of various colors and elaborate ashtrays. At the end of the path was another immaculate, gleaming portal guarded by two more goons. This was obviously Fellini’s personal entryway to the stadium.

These guards were cut from the same cloth as the other two out front, and they eyed her nervously as she approached. Much to her surprise, they activated the elevator and stepped aside. Both men lowered their heads just a touch as she drew closer. “It’s been runnin’ kinda slow lately,” the one on the right offered.

“I’ll check it out,” Dezmara said as she passed between them and boarded. “I’ll need to take it all the way to the top to get a proper assessment. Make sure the boys upstairs are expecting me—I don’t want to be shot for fixin’ the big man’s elevator.” Both thugs nodded their acknowledgement and then disappeared behind the sliding doors.

The lift hummed softly as it propelled Dezmara into the heights of the Tolocnium Palace. She couldn’t be certain, but it felt like she was moving at incredible speed, and she knew she didn’t have much time to formulate a plan. She’d have to wing it. Dezmara took a deep breath to ready herself as the indicator above her flashed to announce the approach of the elevator’s only destination—Fellini’s living quarters. The doors opened and she pressed the control panel button that would keep them that way then stepped out into the hall.

Dezmara quickly sized up the sentries at the left end of the corridor as she rounded to face the elevator again. She put one hand on the back of her neck and the other on her hip in her best ‘hmmm, I wonder what’s goin’ on here’ act before leaning back inside and punching in commands to lower the lift a few feet. She straightened back into the hallway and watched as the car dropped below the level of the floor and stopped, exposing a thick cable secured to its top by a large nut. She stepped into the shaft, pulled the wrench from her holster, and adjusted the opening to fit around the multi-faceted collar. She put the wrench in place and then made several loud, distressed grunts as if straining to loosen it.

Dezmara pretended to struggle several more times to make sure the next phase of her plan was believable. “Goddam piece of junk!” she hollered and then poked her head around the doorframe. “Excuse me. Could one of you come an’ give me a hand? I can’t seem to knock this damn thing loose!” One of the guards snorted smugly as if to say that a stronger man, such as himself, could certainly get the job done, and he strutted down the hall. He rounded the corner to assist the weakling engineer, but he never got to prove his might. The bottom of Dezmara’s boot whipped up in a wicked side kick that crushed his throat. The thug clutched his neck with both hands and fell to his knees. Dezmara leaned into the top half of his body to keep it from crashing to the deck. He let out a few choking sounds that were muffled in the cavern of the elevator shaft. Dezmara quickly turned off the voice-veil and gave a couple of deep grunts to cover up the noises. “See, not as easy as you thought, now, is it?!” she said, turning the electronic voice back on. “I think you almost have it!”

Dezmara switched back and forth between her impersonation of the strong-arm man struggling to free the cable collar and her electronic voice a couple times. She even let the sounds of her own efforts as she hauled the thug’s body to the back corner of the elevator shaft float down the passageway, in order to sell the scene a little more. When she had caught her breath, Dezmara stuck her head into the hallway again. “Say, your friend here doesn’t seem to be able to get this thing done on his own. You mind lending us a hand?” If the goon was suspicious at all, it didn’t show as he walked toward the elevator without hesitation.

Dezmara prepared to let loose another crippling blow as heavy footsteps thudded down the corridor toward her. Just one more watchdog to go and Fellini would be hers, caught completely off guard. She couldn’t wait to see the look on his ugly Turillian face when she burst through the door, put the edge of one of her blades to his throat, and demanded to know where Simon and Diodojo were.
“I wonder if they’re up here somewhere?”
she thought as she adjusted her attack stance. The time had come.

Energy and power surged through her muscles and Dezmara’s mind screamed,
“Attack!”
But instead of the full figure of the sentry presenting itself as an easy target in the framework of the elevator, two bulging eyes on the ends of strange, pinkish appendages snaked around the corner. “Oh, SHI” She didn’t even have time to finish cursing. The thug rushed through the opening with his hand groping for his gun and his mouth ready to let out a howling call of attack. Dezmara needed to silence him fast, but stopping the sound of gunshots was a higher priority.

He yanked at the auto strapped to his side, and as it cleared his holster, Dezmara snapped a front-kick at his hand. The bones in his big meat hook popped and crackled under the blow. She was simultaneously relieved and mortified that the goon didn’t make so much as a peep. Instead of crying out, he quickly reached into his belt and slashed at her with a hellish-looking blade. Dezmara dodged backward as the knife missed spilling her guts onto the roof of the elevator by microns, and her feet tangled with the outstretched legs of the other enforcer lying slumped in the corner. She stumbled, and her attacker wasted no time. His arm arched over his head and crashed down with the point of the blade aimed at the top of the kranos.

Dezmara dropped to one knee and quickly reached up with crossed forearms to block the onslaught. She absorbed the blow by rolling onto her side, and as he followed through, Dezmara cocked her leg up by her chest and launched her heel at his knee. The goon’s leg crunched, and he toppled over, Dezmara still holding onto his arm. As he hit the ground, she spun to the side and snaked her left leg over his head. She squeezed her thighs, lifted her butt off the ground, and jerked back hard on his forearm. It was at least the third broken bone Dezmara had dealt the ruffian in the last ten seconds, and this time, he screeched as his elbow snapped. She quickly put her boot heel on the side of his jaw and pulled back on his arm as she kicked out. He would never cry out from this or any other broken bone again.

Dezmara slid herself up into a sitting position and leaned her back against the elevator shaft. She quickly removed the hammer from her holster and filled both empty spaces with their rightful implements of death before peering cautiously around the door-frame. She studied the portal at the end of the hall and listened for any sounds of commotion coming from inside. There was nothing. The first thug had gone down without a sound, and the second guy’s minimal noises were muffled by the echoing chamber. All signs told her she hadn’t lost the element of surprise. She fished around the bug-eyed goon’s clothes for his security box, and once she found it she stood up, dusted herself off, and walked out into the hall.

Dezmara’s heart beat hard in her chest as her animal mind kicked up a notch. Everything became razor sharp, her moves precise and infallible. She stopped at the entry to Fellini’s penthouse and occupied one hand with plugging in the retired sentinel’s clearance mechanism while the other pulled an auto from its resting place. The small light to the right of the entrance above the prong ports turned from gray to purple. What she thought was one door was actually two, and they swept slowly inward with a pretentious flourish. She left the thug’s authorization tablet sticking out of the console—she would get Fellini’s to access the private elevator to the Gamoratta’s dockyard or, at worst, use Mac’s to get back into the elevator and escape through the casino. Dezmara touched the outside of her jacket, feeling for the outline of Mac’s device just to be sure. It was still in her left inside pocket—right where she left it.

Fellini’s suite was dark, and as she quietly stepped over the threshold, the doors swung back in on themselves and sealed out any remnants of light from the hallway with a soft but foreboding click. Dezmara tapped the kranos to engage the dark-vision, but her display fuzzed and danced with squiggly lines. She punched the controls again to return her sight to normal, but the helmet responded with more angry interference and then erupted with an unbearable screech.
“What the hell’s going on?!”
her mind screamed. She was starting to panic. The flashing bombardment on her eyes and the agonizing squeal in her ears was unraveling her nerves.

Her hands flew up to rip the kranos from her head, but before she could reach the slick, hardened surface, she lost control of her muscles. Her auto clunked to the ground. Dezmara’s body convulsed wildly as streaks of yellow split and crackled inside her clenched eyes like forked lightning. Her teeth ached: buzzing, rattling, and ready to explode inside her mouth at any moment. Then she fell to the floor in a twitching, crumpled wreck. In her last remaining moments of quasi-consciousness, Dezmara felt the weight of her other gun leave her side. Someone rolled her over onto her stomach and—like in a dream—she heard the faraway sound of her blades leaving their custom sheaths before she was returned to her back. The last things she remembered were her head being lifted into the air and then slamming back onto the floor with a distant thud, the cool air of Fellini’s penthouse suite on her face, and an awful laugh laced with a heavy Turillian accent.

Chapter 44:
The Deceiver

D
ezmara’s body was still tingling when her eyes fluttered open. She was in a dark room, and a rich, pungent odor irritated her nose and chest. She was slouched in what felt like a chair, and she pushed up on the seat to sit upright. To her surprise, she wasn’t restrained. Dezmara pulled her head back on her shoulders and blinked several times to focus her eyes, her mind still shaking off the lethargy of being knocked out. Some ways off she spotted a glowing, orange circle. The dot lingered, hovering in the distance for a time, and then grew brighter with the sound of sucking air before fading back to its original smolder.

Just as she realized what she was staring at, a beep sounded in front of her and the lights came on.

She was sitting at the end of a long, oval table made of a light wood and surrounded by high-backed chairs. The walls were paneled to match the table and decorated with obscure, but colorful paintings. There were no windows, only the outline of two doors behind her and a matching pair at the opposite end of the room, offset to the right. The ceiling was lined with four rows of round lights that burned softly, revealing her adversary.

Leonardo Fellini sat at the other end of the wooden expanse, in a chair that was markedly different than all the rest and reminded Dezmara of a throne. The back of the seat was significantly higher and wider than the others—almost to a ridiculous degree—and, of course, it looked like it was forged from tolocnium.

Turillians were distinctive-looking creatures with three prominent nodules of bone crowning their heads beneath the skin. The two outermost protrusions were several inches high and slanted outward. Their squared-off tops had folds of skin that expanded into large spiracles for breathing or smelling and which could be clamped shut when not in use. The center ridge of bone was low and flat and swept down from the middle of the skull, narrowing as it divided the cranium in half and ending at the top of the eyes. Two more bumps of bone floated below the ridge like knuckles, the lower hovering above thick, wide, purple lips that stretched out onto puffy, round cheeks. Turillian eyes were impossibly large, taking up half of their peculiar heads and shaped like giant cathedral windows with the interior lamps long flickered out. Fellini’s eyelids flitted in from the sides as he stared at Dezmara.