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hunted in his mind for a moment, then came up with the umbrella corporation's name: TKB International,
it was. One of the multinationals. Japanese-run, he thought.
He thought of the Japanese signage on the walls, frowned, and went on.
No one else came to meet him for a while, which suited
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him. Somehow I would have thought there were fewer people here, he thought. But it argues the presence of a large
support force. What have they been building here besides weapons, I wonder? Or what have they been preparing
for? They're certainly well-enough armed.
As he came around the curve in the corridor, he was met by a stream of bullets. Now, this really is annoying, he
thought, as he actively had to fight against the stream to keep upright. Someone down there was using a fixed-mount
gun instead of the little portable stuff they had been using on him. He waded into the bullets, pushing harder and
harder as he got closer to the gun, and slowly raising one arm as he got nearer. It was one of those machine guns that
hit you with six hundred slugs a second, and there was a large shield behind it to keep you from picking off the person
who was doing the firing.
I must be getting close to something good, he thought, and came up to the front of the gun. Bullets splattered off him
in normally impossible ricochet angles as he picked up the gun by its muzzle, made sure of his grip, and then heaved it
over.
The man on the other side of the shield sprawled over backwards. Evan shot him and moved on, pausing only a
moment to look at his uniform. It, too, had die blue dragon insignia. Then he turned his attention back to the RF
detector. The incidence of RF in the area was getting quite strong.
Evan walked on, seeing and hearing no one further for the time being. It didn't take very long to mobilize when we
came in, he thought. Definitely a paramilitary organization of some kind. Filing clerks would hardly respond that
quickly to an armed incursion. And their aim is pretty good. Not that it's been helping them.
He paused at a T-junction, and looked both ways to see what the RF detector suggested. It suggested that he go right.
He did, and as he passed one doorway, the reading peaked, then began to fall off a bit.
Aha, Evan thought, and tried the door. Locked. Well,
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there were remedies for that. He leaned against it and gave it a good push. It didn't give right away.
Armored, he thought. Excellent. So there is something sensitive in there. But I'd really rather not
take the chance of damaging any of the equipment in there Joss would have my head.
Evan set himself squarely in front of the door, found his balance point, and pushed, really leaning into it
this tune. The door groaned, resisting him. Reinforced hinges, he thought, inside right He
administered a few focused blows to that side of the door with one gauntlet, then pushed again. His
servos whined in protest.
He ignored them and kept pushing.
And the door fell inward, off its hinges, Evan fell in with it.
He bounced to his feet, expecting more shooting, and annoyed by the prospect; he didn't want this
equipment hurt. But there was no one else in the room. All right, he thought, and looked around the
place. The room had that same sort of tidy sterility that computer rooms had had for some centuries now;
empty space, with low black cabinets lined up around the walls, and a central table for the people who
worked at the computer and tended it.
He picked one of the black boxes, out of the way in a corner, and noted approvingly that it was a little
way away from the wall. He reached down, felt around for a ventilating panel, found one, and carefully
tugged it off. He tapped open the fairing on his arm and came up with Joss's widget; then looked around
to see if he could find a contact pad inside the machine. Fortunately it was one of those that took plug-in
modules, and the contact seats that those used would work just fine. Evan snugged Joss's little black box
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