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"And then they would know that we . . . How did you put it?" Tulo'stenaloor asked.
"They would know that they have been 'hacked,' " Goloswin said. "That we 'own' their system."
"We don't want to do that," Tulo'stenaloor mused. "Yet."
"What do you want to do in the meantime?" Goloswin asked. "Or can I go back to tinkering?"
"Just one last question," the War Leader said. "Can you set the system to 'filter' out the Po'oslena'ar?"
* * *
Wendy shook her head as she watched Elgars finish up her workout. The sniper always closed with an exercise that was peculiar to her. She had suspended a weight, in this case fifty pounds of standard metal barbell weights, from a rope. The rope, in turn, was wrapped around a dowel; actually a chopped down mop handle.
Elgars would then "winch" up the weights by twisting the rope in her hands. Up and slowly back down, fifty times. Wendy was lucky if she could do it five times.
"I gave up on that one," Wendy admitted. They generally worked out once a day for about an hour switching between strength and cardiovascular sessions. Lately, though, they had been concentrating more on weight training; Wendy was trying out for a "professional" emergency services position and Elgars was backstopping her training. Today Wendy had stuck to warm-ups; when they were done she was going to go to the tryouts and she didn't even want to think about going through that SOB after a full workout.
"You ought to start at a lower weight and rep," the captain said. "It's good for the wrists."
"I can see that," Wendy admitted, looking at the captain's; the woman's forearms were starting to look like a female Popeye's.
"Makes it easier to climb ladders among other things, most of the stuff in your PPE."
"Yeah, well, time to go to that now," Wendy said nervously.
"One of these days I will figure out the purpose of a fire department in this place," Elgars said, wiping off her face with a towel and wrapping the towel around her neck. "Every fire that has broken out was extinguished before the crew arrived; that is what sprinklers and Halon are for. I think they're just a very overtrained clean-up crew."
"Well, at least it feels like you're doing something," Wendy said sharply.
"And caring for screaming children is not doing something?" A
"Do you want to do it the rest of your life?" Wendy asked.
"No," the captain said, leading the way out of the gym. "But, then again, you don't get the desire to disembowel the little bastards."
"You get along with Billy," Wendy said with her own tight smile.
"That is because he doesn't say anything."
"Well, there is that," Wendy snapped. "You weren't in Fredericksburg; you can't know what it was like."
"No, I can't," Elgars said. "Thank you very much for pointing that out. I was not in Fredericksburg and I wouldn't remember anyway."
Wendy stopped and looked at the officer for a moment. "When did we start fighting?"
Elgars stopped in turn and cocked her head. "I think when I complained about the fire department."
"Okay," Wendy said. "It's something to do that helps. Yes, I'm tired of the daycare center. I was tired of it when most of this damned place was open cavern and it was just a couple of hundred shaken up Virginians. I'm sick and tired of it now. I've watched those kids grow up without sunlight or anyplace to play but a few rooms and I just can't do it any more.
"I'm tired of wiping noses. I'm tired of not making a contribution. I'm tired of being treated like some sort of brood mare, especially since the only guy I'm willing to be one with is NEVER HERE!"
"Okay," A
"As to Billy," Wendy continued, leading the way down the corridor, "Shari was the last person out of Central Square. Billy . . . looked back."
"I don't know what that means," Elgars said with a sigh. "What and where is Central Square?"
"It was the big shopping center outside of Fredericksburg," Wendy explained patiently. "The Posleen dropped right on it. Shari just . . . walked away. Carrying Susie and leading Kelly and Billy. Billy . . . looked back. He's never been right since."
"Okay," Elgars said patiently. "I still don't understand. Looked back? At the shopping center? Whatever that is."
"The Posleen were . . . eating the people there."
"Ah." Elgars thought about that for a second. "That would be bad."
"And they apparently were . . . spreading out towards Shari. She says she doesn't really know because she wouldn't look back. But Billy did."
"Okay," the captain said with a frown. "I guess that would be bad."
"You don't get it, do you?" Wendy asked. She'd noticed that sometimes the sniper was sometimes almost inhumanly dense about stuff.
"No," Elgars replied.
"It was like one of those nightmares," Wendy said with a shudder. "Where something's chasing you and you can't get away no matter how fast or where you run. The docs think he's sort of . . . locked up in that. Like he can't think about anything else; he's just replaying the nightmare."
"I still don't get it," Elgars opined. "I don't have that nightmare."
"You don't?" Wendy asked. "Never?"
"I did once," Elgars admitted. "But I turned around and killed the thing that was following me." She shuddered. "It was one of the octopuses again."
"Octopuses?" Wendy stopped and turned to the captain. "What octopuses?"
"You don't dream about giant purple octopuses?" Elgars asked in surprise. "I do. Usually I'm watching from the outside and they're pulling out my brain. It's like it's all squiggling worms and they lay it out on a table and hit the worms with mallets to get them to quit squiggling. Every time they hit one of the worms, I can feel it in my head. You never have that dream?"
Wendy had gone from astonishment to wide-eyed shock and now turned back towards their destination shaking her head. "Huh, uh. And, friend that you are, I have to admit that that falls into the category of TMI."
"TMI?" Elgars asked.
" 'Too Much Information.' "
"I wouldn't have run, for that matter."
"Even with three kids that were your responsibility?" Wendy asked.
"Ah . . ." Elgars had to stop to think about that. "I probably would have fought anyway. I can't imagine ru
"Shari's alive," Wendy pointed out. "So are her children. All the other people, adults and children, who were at Central Square are dead. Unless you've got the force to hold ground, staying is a losing proposition."
Elgars shrugged as a double set of high blasplas doors, similar to an airlock, retreated into the walls. The room beyond was large: high-ceilinged, at least sixty meters across and even taller than it was wide. The walls were covered in white tiles and there were large fans on the distant ceiling.
In the center of the room was a large structure made out of vitrified stone. It looked something like a small, separate building, about six stories high, but it was covered in black soot and had dozens of different pipe-ends sticking out of it. The numerous windows were all unglazed, with edges cracked as if from hammering or, perhaps, really intense heat. A series of catwalks led off of it to lines arrayed up to the ceiling.
Arrayed along the base of the walls were hundreds of small openings. As Elgars and Wendy entered, the overhead fans kicked on with a distant howl and a faint draft came out of the nearest opening. The fans were drawing the air in the room fast enough to slightly reduce the pressure; if it was not for the hundreds of air-vents along the floor wherever the air did enter would be a hurricane.
The walls were lined with lockers and rescue gear and near the structure in the middle were some of the "fire-carts" that the rescue teams used for transportation in the Sub-Urb. The carts were sort of like a large golf cart with a high pressure pump and racks for rescue gear on the back. With the pump removed they could double as ambulances.