Vickers (Corp.s.e.)

"There's plenty left over but you're going to have to look for it. '

The woman leaned heavily on the table and began to rummage through the mess. She found a bottle of champagne and put it to her mouth. Vickers noticed that she had green eyes.

"It's flat."

"What did you expect?"

As she drank, her coat fell open. She was naked beneath it. Her body was white and liberally freckled. There were a number of angry red welts across her torso as though she'd been recently flogged.

"What have they been doing to you?"

"Having their fun."

By the standards of the superpeople the ill treatment was comparatively mild. There had been rumors of snuff parties although Vickers had never seen any solid evidence. The woman had found a bottle of scotch with some left in it. She closed her coat, hugging the bottle to her like a baby.

"I've… got to be going. I think I've had enough for tonight."

She pushed herself away from the table. The clicks of her heels zigzagged across the black and white marble of the piazza in the direction of the elevators. Wolfjohn was playing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Vickers and Fenton lapsed into an almost-drunk silence. Even after eighteen months, it was all to easy to slip back into the trauma, back to thinking of all the people and all the places that had been wiped away like they had never been, all the faces and all the names and the locations that were gone forever. The more you tried to accept it, the more overwhelming the horror became. Vickers was quite relieved when he heard Eggy's voice booming from one of the tu

"Hey, what's going on?"

Eggy had been drinking but he wasn't drunk. He was swaggering rather than staggering. His faced was covered in smeared, warrior-style red and purple war paint. War paint was a comparatively new addition to Eggy's repetoire and one that Vickers found a little disturbing. Eggy jerked his thumb back down the corridor.

"You want to see the horrorshow back there?"

Fenton looked up. "Horrowshow? That's a quaint, old fashioned word."

"It's pretty quaint and old fashioned back there. It's like something out of the Marquis de Sade."

"The superpeople are cutting up?"

Eggy dropped into a chair.

"Cutting up, slicing up, flogging and hogging it up. They've even got them chained by the feet from the ceiling. You've never seen so many people getting distorted at once. Eight-Man's going around boasting how he fucked Thane Ride in Lloyd-Ransom's four-poster."

"You're kidding."

"The hell I am. I believe him."

"I thought Thane Ride only fucked girls these days."

"According to Eight-Man she was so stoned she was past knowing."

"And where was Lloyd-Ransom at the time?"

"Who knows where he goes when he vanishes."

Vickers' eyes abruptly focused.

"Vanishes? Lloyd-Ransom vanishes?"

"That's what they're saying. Sometimes for as long as a couple of days. You two didn't hear about it?"

Both Fenton and Vickers shook their heads.

"Not a damn thing."

"Me neither."

Eggy shrugged. "There isn't really that much to tell. It's just that the word among the superpeople is that our glorious leader regularly disappears."

"So where does he go?"

"Who knows? There are some that say he goes outside."

"Outside?"

"That's what some of them are saying. It's probably just bullshit. I mean, how the hell would he get outside?"

The PA was playing Elvis Presley singing "Blue Christmas."

Alarms were suddenly howling.

"Shit!"

Vickers quickened his pace. He hurried down the corridor to the nearest wall phone. A handler was talking into it. When she saw Vickers coming toward her, her face took on a look of pure terror. A hand flew to her mouth. She backed away to the full length of the cord. She held out the phone to him. "Please…"

Vickers neither had the time nor the disposition to be nice. He simply took the handset and let the frightened woman fluster away down the corridor. On the other end of the line, someone was wanting to know what was going on. "Hang up."

Vickers must have hit exactly the right note of authority since the other end of the line did exactly what it was told. Vickers punched in the code for Security Coordination. "This is Vickers. What's going on?"

"There's a riot started on the second level. A bunch of handlers refused to go on shift. Something about a cut in their water allocation. A Code D squad went in but they must have come on a bit too rough because fighting started and they were driven out of the GLA."

"What GLA is it?"

"Twenty-six."

"Women's area, right?" Vickers was relieved. At least Joha

"I'd better go up there, see if I can do anything. Are any more of my group headed up there?"

"Parkwood and Debbie are on their way."

"I'll find them."

He hung up and jogged to the elevators. About the only consolation in being a bunker corpse was that you were virtually your own boss. As he stepped out onto the second level, he found himself in the middle of a firefight. There was smoke in the corridor and the acrid smell that comes with gunfire. It was the kind of shock he could have done without. The handlers had guns. They must have disarmed some of the first Code D squad that went in. He threw himself back, but he wasn't quite fast enough. The elevator doors closed behind him. He pressed back against them, taking advantage of the minimal cover provided by the entrance. A shotgun blast tore up a piece of wall that was uncomfortably close. He slid down into a crouch. The second level was a mess but this was nothing new. At the best of times, its corridors were ugly with garbage, graffiti and broken light panels. Even across the elevator door, where Vickers crouched, someone had scrawled the angry but all too common slogan, "WE WANT OUT!"

Four security people in yellow uniforms were slowly moving up, pushing a golf cart in front of them, using it as cover. Further back a second squad was unreeling a steam hose. Further back still, Vickers spotted Parkwood and Debbie crouched behind another golf cart that had been overturned and thoroughly trashed. He looked in the other direction. The women had barricaded the entrance to the living area and were firing from behind an effective wall of stacked bunks and lockers. At least temporarily, they had the advantage. Another shotgun blast chewed up the wall beside him and Vickers decided that he'd be a great deal better off back with Parkwood and Debbie. The only problem was how to get there.

The group pushing the golf cart was almost level with him. It looked like the best chance that he was going to get. He tensed. He treated the barricade to a fast burst from his Yasha and jumped. As he rolled into cover behind the golf cart there was a burst of firing from the barricade. He estimated there were at least five weapons up there. Autoload shotguns and maybe one M90. It would be far from easy to get them out. He left the uniformed security to their slow progress and worked his way back to where the other two corpses were still crouched. It was with some relief that he ducked in beside them.

"Is it as much of a mess as it looks?"

"It's probably worse. The uniforms seem to have fucked things up about as bad as they could. That first Code D team that went in must have been a total bunch of clowns. They started manhandling the women. They even, by all accounts, put down their weapons. The women just grabbed their guns. They blew away two of them on the spot and they've got two more in there as hostages."

Parkwood sniffed. "I don't know what good they think hostages are going to do them. Lloyd-Ransom isn't going to deal. As far as he's concerned, everyone's expendable."