A Dark and Hungry God Arises 25 - Angus [4]

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A Dark and Hungry God Arises 25 - Angus [4]

Post by Cord Hurn »

Angus feels the time has come to rescue Davies from the Bill's holding cell. He's in pain from Milos burning the inside of his mouth with hot nics, and feeling maddening frustration that his zone implant programming won't allow him to kill Milos in retaliation. But his zone implants start to ease his physical pain. Angus collects his thoughts enough to ask Milos to collect any messages for Trumpet through their hotel room's computer terminal. Milos reports a message from Nick is there and reluctantly admits it's time for them to go.

Angus leads Milos out of the Ease-n-Sleaze complex and out onto the main walkways of Billingate's cruise. As they are surrounded by people going to and fro, Angus informs Milos that no guards or wires are nearby, so they can talk freely about Nick's message. Milos tells Angus Nick found out the Bill keeps people in cells deep within his command complex. Angus knows where those cells are, having once been detained there by the Bill, but he doesn't explain this to Milos. Milos reminds Angus he hasn't heard how they can rescue Davies from his cell, stating they can't just ask for him to be released. Angus suddenly gets information from an internal datalink on how they can rescue Davies, information made available after Milos says ask for him.
Triggered by Milos' words--or the proximity of a crisis--this database informed him that his EM prostheses had capabilities he'd never suspected. They weren't simply able to identify wires and bugeyes; read alarms and locks; analyze technological enhancements. Properly coded, they could also emit jamming devices. He could glitch a monitor until it recorded nothing but distortion, if he got close enough to it.

Or--

Suddenly his excitement became so intense that he forgot Milos and the cruise, Warden Dios and Morn Hyland. The world around him seemed to vanish in discovery.

Or he could bend light.

Not over a large area, of course. His power supply wasn't adequate for that. But he could surround himself with a radiant curve, an electromagnetically induced refraction wave in the visible spectrum, which would make him effectively indistinguishable to most optical monitors. Human eyes would always be able to see him. But neurologic and electronic encoding were fundamentally different, vulnerable to different kinds of distortion. And because the Bill's bugeyes were designed to function over distance under uncertain lighting conditions, they received wider bandwidths--with less accuracy. They would record Angus as nothing more than a slight opalescent ripple in the image, like a blur on the bugeye's lens.

The ripple could still be tracked. An intensive computer analysis of the recordings could follow it as it moved. But first it had to be noticed: someone in Operations--or in the Bill's command complex---had to see it and worry about it. And that might never happen. No one on Thanatos Minor had any reason to suspect that Angus carried this kind of jamming equipment--that he or anyone else could carry it.

Light-bending fields were known, of course, but they weren't common: their emitters were too bulky, and required too much power, to be effectively portable. And even where the size and power consumption of the equipment weren't a problem, the fields themselves remained too small and immobile to have much practical application. By welding these emitters into Angus, Hashi Lebwohl had accomplished a miracle of miniaturization.

Lebwohl and Dios had left him defenseless in the path of madness; he hated and feared them. But that didn't prevent him from experiencing a strange, amazed exultation which bordered on gratitude at their technical abilities. When they'd taken his freedom away, they'd made him into something wonderful.
Angus doesn't tell Milos what he has learned, because as a revenge for Milos' torments Angus doesn't want Milos to have any reassurances. He just tells Milos to stay very close to him, to hide behind him if someone shoots at them, and to keep silent. Milos obeys as they get into a series of elevators. Angus activates the jamming field when they they are out of the range of any bugeyes. Then, when an elevator he and Milos are riding becomes emptied of other passengers, he disables the elevator alarm with one of his built-in lasers.

Angus and Milos then head down to the level of the cells, and Angus quickly shoots both cyborg guards. However, Angus doesn't shoot the transmitters of the guards, so as not to alarm the computers monitoring the Bill's surveillance system. He and Milos open the cell that was being guarded, and come face to face with young Davies Hyland. It's obvious at once to Angus and Milos that Davies is the offspring of Morn AND Angus, and Angus realizes Nick omitted this information as a shock for them. As soon as Davies sees Angus, he punches him in the face.

A pretty exciting chapter for me to read, always. And the first time through I was highly curious to read how Angus and Davies would react to each other.
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Post by Cord Hurn »

Now.

As the door swept shut, sending the lift upward again, Angus fired a precise laser needle into the control panel, burning a gap in its alarm circuitry.

No warnings sounded, either in the car or in Operations, as he engaged the same locks that Maintenance would have used to take the lift out of service.

For a few minutes, at least he had a private elevator.

As a precaution, he clamped one hand briefly over Milos' mouth, reminding him to be quiet. Then he sent the car downward, like a taste of freefall toward the core of the rock. Where nothing lived except the Bill in his strongroom and Billingate's fusion generator.

Milos' face looked like Angus' mouth felt: thick with pain; sickened by ground-in ash, Still good. Angus showed his teeth and watched the indicators count the levels.

He knew the one he wanted. His memory of the time he'd been locked up here was as vivid as his databases. You remember Morn Hyland. All his memories were vivid. She had a kid. Of course, there was no guarantee the Bill still used the same rooms. That's what we were doing on Enablement--force-growing her kid. Come to that, there was no guarantee the kid was still alive. She calls him Davies Hyland, after her pure, dead father. The whole deal might be a lie. Now the Amnion want him back. Succorso's treachery might extend to risking Milos, his only ally, for the sake of some unimaginable leverage with the Bill, with the Amnion. They want to study the consequences of having a mother who didn't lose her mind. And the cells would be guarded in any case; watched by human eyes.

Nevertheless Angus' concentration held steady, like one of his lasers. He was moving. Personally, he didn't believe Succorso had lied--not about needing to get Davies away from the Bill. Succorso's efforts to conceal his desperation only made it more convincing. And Angus' datacore was incapable of doubt: the prospect of trading Davies Hyland to redeem Morn had engaged programming as compulsory as the pull of a black hole.

Five levels to go.

Fourthreetwoone.

Stop.
I like how Donaldson shows the details that can create uncertainty for Angus' rescue mission, as it creates more tension in me as a reader. And the relaying of Angus's thoughts to the reader about how he was eager to continue with the rescue mission gives the pacing a forward momentum that keeps me turning the pages in anticipation. This part of the story is one of my favorites of the book.
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